This June the City of Chicago approved Walmart's bid to open up dozens of new facilities, beginning with grocery stores in the city's chronically underserved South side. Just a month earlier the company committed $2 billion dollars to fight hunger in the U.S. But behind the high profile donations is a decidedly less charitable story repeating itself throughout corporate America.
In large part fueled by Michelle Obama's goal to eliminate food deserts in seven years, Walmart has set the PR machine in motion around its new battle cry: "The Great Grocery Smackdown:"
"If you've always lived near a grocery store or fresh market, here's something you've probably never considered: There are neighborhoods across the United States where it's nearly impossible to find fresh produce. These places are called "Food Deserts" and Walmart is committed to removing them from our communities." The Walmart proposal for Chicago has been framed as "the beginning of a major private-sector effort to address the food desert problem on the South Side."
Walmart sees Chicago's South side as the key to the rest of the city -- in fact as the key to all cities. According to the Chicago Tribune, in a recent meeting with Mayor Daley Walmart offered to open grocery stores in food deserts in exchange for access to the other, more desirable locations. "We have very small market share in the large cities within the United States, so we see a big opportunity for us to grow in those urban markets," said Hank Mullany, who runs Walmart stores in the Midwest, Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions.
Not only will the company bring fresh produce in smaller grocery stores, the employer claims it will bring 12,000 jobs to Chicago.
A recent study out of Loyola University in Chicago focusing on the impact of a Walmart that opened on the west side of Chicago in 2006 indicates that the new facility cost the local economy as many jobs as it created. The Loyola University study also examined tax revenues for 18 months before and after the retailer opened its doors and found no evidence of increased local economic activity.
In 2008, Walmart settled 63 cases of wage theft for a total of $352 million. Even when the company does pay the agreed upon wage, workers still come up short. According to Good Jobs First, taxpayers subsidize Walmart stores through numerous forms of public assistance -- Medicaid, Food Stamps, public housing -- that often allow workers to subsist on the company's low wages. A report by the House Education and Workforce Committee conservatively places these costs deferred by the retail giant at $420,750 per store; the Walmart Foundation's per-store charitable giving is just 11 percent of that amount ($47,222). Now adding to the pot of public funds to be had, Michelle Obama and other well intentioned groups concerned with food deserts may have made these areas much more profitable than they once were. As part of her Let's Move campaign the First Lady has pledged $400 million/year to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable food. In the words of Brahm Ahmadi, founder of People's Grocery in West Oakland,
"We're seeing a lot of funding being rolled out, but also what we're seeing is the corporate retail industry who literally two to three years ago wouldn't even talk to you about this [food deserts], now almost salivating over the opportunity for the windfalls that will come from free public money, essentially. Even though they could easily finance themselves to open stores in the inner city neighborhoods, why should they when the administration is perfectly happy to give them more money to do it?"
Walmart is not the only major grocery chain salivating at the thought of public subsidies: Tesco, Target, Safeway and Supervalu have all announced plans to open stores in urban centers.
But hunger and food security stem from poverty, that in the US comes from unemployment and poor wages. The solution to food security in America must come through a revitalized food economy -- one that pays workers a living wage, that includes worker and minority owned businesses, and that keeps food dollars in local communities. Walmart does none of that.
Seventeen percent of American jobs are in the food system, and those jobs are among the lowest paid in the country. If food industry leaders are serious about improving food access, they need to start by tackling food insecurity where it starts -- with sub-poverty wages. No amount of fresh produce will cure America's food and health gap unless it comes with a commitment to fight its root causes -- poverty and inequality. To really fight food deserts, the Obamas should start by supporting living wages for workers and support the food businesses that create true economic development in the communities that need it most.
With Annie Shattuck and Zoe Brent
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They should be boy* cotted !
some people obviously want to grow their own food.
You will see that a majority of the products in a typical Safeway belong to this one company. One company.They own Jiffy-Pop AND Orville Riedenbacker; Hebrew National and Slim Jims. The wine world has gone this route as well, unbeknownst to the average consumer. Couple this with the advertising industry and the state of food and wine writing today and we become like sheep, absentmindedly plucking products from a shelf without real information. This corner of rampant corporatism illustrates the grip we are under in every aspect of our lives in America today, most notably for HuffPost readers, in politics, banking, military considerations, foreign policy. This is a very different world today from 50 years ago when you actually knew where the dairy your milk came from was located, or your butcher's children's names. A fascinating, but, to me, troubling topic.
Walmart gets all kinds of incentives to come to town, small retailers can't compete, they get no help. Our small town lost bakerys, meat markets, farmers markets, beauty shops, eye care drs, small clothing shops, small automotive repairs shops, the list is endless.....these small businesses were just out of luck...no help at all.
The to big too fail banks, get bailed..unlimited funds, no strings attached.
Small hometown banks closing every Friday evening, they get no help.
Everything is just backwards...those who need help, can't get any. Those who don't need any help, get unlimited funds to get bigger and bigger.
Maybe it's too late.....just seems to me if they want to take over the world, the least we can do is stop contributing our federal, state and local tax dollars to help them accomplish their goal.
Also, check out this cool video from The Food Trust (the group helping make this Pennsylvania program work). It follows the story of Jeff Brown, who owns the five-store chain of Brown's ShopRites and is kind of a prototypical recipient in this program: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRXmBvgC47M
The nonprofit I work for has helped try to bring this idea to scale specifically because it helps small-businesses and strengthens local communities. Very cool effort.
maybe let local people sell produce off trucks
people did that in Budapest in the 80s, brought food to the city, just sold it and went home
in the 30s American farmers sent mail order food
It's also possible for people to use food stamps at our city greenmarkets, but they are few and far between (and often on inconvenient days) in food-desert neighborhoods.
Getting fresh, healthy food into underserved neighborhoods is a very tough subject, I don't think there will be one single, simple solution. I do think part of the solution will be for corporations (because they're biased and wrong-headed) to receive incentives to open in these neighborhoods; the challenge will be for government to secure the best deal for the people.
So far, they've used $30 million in state money to open or expand 83 stores, create 5,000 jobs, and bring healthy food access to 400,000 people (More here: http://bit.ly/cBMKFW)
What's been especially interesting is that the vast majority of recipients have been small, independent grocers. According to this 2008 story (http://bit.ly/9fVnE5), "Perhaps most remarkable, all are independent businesses. One-third are single-location retailers, while the other two-thirds are locally owned chains of 2 to 17 stores." So, not exactly Wal-Mart....
At Walmart, we continue to see an opportunity to serve more customers in underserved communities throughout the United States. This is especially true in places like Chicago, with large populations of residents that need convenient access to fresh, affordable food, and live in communities that are in need of new jobs and economic growth. This article is not only factually inaccurate and mischaracterizes our intentions, it’s also insulting to the people who are trying to build a life in these underserved communities.
On the South and West sides of Chicago, unemployment rates are double the city average and 600,000 residents still do not have convenient access to healthy, affordable groceries. Don’t take our word for it, just listen to Adelaide Randall, resident of the 9th Ward:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wB1rjaUtRM