How Big-Box Supermarkets Are Destroying Your Access to Local, Quality Food
How can you live in a food-producing region yet not have access to any of it?
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Sometimes I think about stealing sheep.
I saw plenty of them a few weeks ago when I visited my family in Wales, a country well known for having more sheep than people.
I could see them from my childhood bedroom window. I could definitely steal one for my dinner.
If I want Welsh lamb, that’s what I might have to resort to. Because almost all the lamb in my local supermarket is from New Zealand.
It’s not just the lamb. It’s the Peruvian asparagus in the middle of English asparagus season. It’s the Scandinavian fish sold by a supermarket in a British coastal town.
It’s that we have few alternatives to the supermarket. Farmer’s markets are not available to everyone. Local grocers are being run out of business.
In my town, it’s the supermarket or nothing.
This isn’t just a British problem, this is across the developed world. You can live in an area that grows fabulous produce but find it impossible to get your hands on any of it.
No. All you have is Costco. Walmart. Asda. Big-box supermarkets dominate and with them come globalised supply chains.
Supply chains which have systematically destroyed our access to food grown just a few miles away.
Everything is against your quest for local produce
When 89% of people buy their produce in supermarkets, these stores become kingmakers for the humble locally-grown carrot. It’s up to them whether to stock local produce or not.
But sourcing local food is expensive. It can be inconsistent. It’s time-consuming.
These are huge disadvantages for economic powerhouses that care about little more than bottom-line profit margins.
So locally grown produce is sidelined in favour of cheaper products procured elsewhere.
It’s why my local Portuguese supermarket sells grapes from Chile and oranges from Spain despite growing both themselves.
It’s no secret that supermarkets dominate supply chains and keep food as cheap as possible by capitalising on globalisation. We know that means quality suffers or farmers are financially squeezed to the point of going out of business.
Yet we still shop there.
Of course we do. It’s not like we have the time to wander through our local high street picking up produce the way our parents or grandparents may have done.
We don’t have room at home to grow our own. Even if we did, we barely have time for an hour of Love is Blind let alone digging the vegetable patch.
Zoom instead of Zucchini.
Even if we do have the time to shop intentionally, there has been such a systematic dismantling of local stores, you’re incredibly lucky to live in a town that has any at all. If you do, the chances are they’re more expensive than you can afford every day.
Small stores don’t have the luxury of volume or streamlined supply chains. I should know. I ran one.
Besides, there’s no guarantee that small shops or farmer’s markets will sell any better produce than the supermarket or that their claims of local are even real.
“Local” is an unregulated term which is why Whole Foods gets away with branding a non-dairy yoghurt as local despite it being made in Vietnam.
Or why, when I visited the island of Anglesey last week, I picked up a bar of “Anglesey chocolate” only to discover it hadn’t been made on Anglesey at all.
Everything that has happened in large-scale food economics since World War II is against you and your quest for local and quality produce. It’s capitalised on an environment where humans are overworked and underpaid, thus have very little time, money or energy to shop intentionally.
Which results in eyeing up those Welsh sheep in the field next to your house whilst clutching your supermarket-procured New Zealand lamb shoulder.
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Groceries are not a splurge
Even if you decide to be more intentional with your groceries, you run the risk of being branded bougie.
Frankly, it’s appalling that local, quality produce is a luxury in some of the richest countries in the world.
But this is where we are. Business Insider recently ran this gem of an article:
Millennials and Gen Z’s trendy new splurge: groceries
Yes, groceries are no longer a human right, they’re now a “splurge.”
When you get into the weeds of the article, it becomes clear that Millennials and Gen Zs are simply acting on what they are famous for.
Quality is, of course, far more expensive than your run-of-the-mill ultra-processed food. After all, you can get two ready meals in a big box supermarket for the price of one bag of organic carrots.
This article is textbook gaslighting — the altering of reality. Calling groceries a splurge makes it sound like young people are being irresponsible with their money when in reality they’re being socially responsible. They’re taking ownership of their health and the well-being of the world.
It’s appalling that supermarkets have become so powerful that buying quality or local is now considered fancy. A splurge. Something only the privileged can do.
As the woman in this brilliant viral TikTok says:
One of the weirdest parts of modern society is standing in the egg aisle trying to figure out what level of chicken happiness you can afford.
This is where we are. What would have been considered normal a few generations ago — organic vegetables, free-range chickens, line-caught fish — is now the domain of the privileged.
And that, friends, is the saddest part of this whole shebang.
You can only do what you can do
Many of us want to change the status quo but there’s no easy way forward. The threads of this issue run deeper than many of us can untangle.
Having said that, we all have choices. Millennials and Gen Zs are making that choice, prioritising quality food over other things.
And they’re right to do so. After all, if companies only listen to profits, the biggest vote you have is with your wallet.
Yes, it’s harder. It’s more expensive. It’s not available to everyone. And as a privileged white woman, I’m not about to preach to you about how you should always buy local or quality.
But if you do have a choice (many people have at least some autonomy over their spending habits) and you’re picking up what I’m putting down here, it’s your responsibility to make the most of that choice.
However that looks to you.
That could be buying local, if you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity. That could be learning how to cook in a way that produces less waste, thus affording you better quality produce.
As the old saying goes, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You can’t do everything but you can do something.
For me, my desire for locally grown food goes beyond environmental, altruistic or even health reasons.
It’s a reaction against massive systems who don’t give a shit about me. Or you. Systems that only care about money and power.
Call it my problem with authority if you like.
Because supermarkets have all the power, they’ve won. And I don’t want them to win.
I want humans to win.
But you can’t win with crappy food choices. Everyone knows you are what you eat.
There’s no silver bullet here. All you can do is do what you can do with the resources available to you.
Vote with your wallet. Join those Millennials and Gen Zs who are making better, more intentional choices with their groceries.
Cook.
Grow some tomatoes in a window box.
Most of all — and this is a note for myself more than anyone else — stop strategising how to fit sheep into the back of your car.
Leave the slaughtering to the local butchers and buy your lamb legally from them.
Lord knows they need your custom.
I currently live in the West of Ireland. The town in which we live professes to be an excellent one for foodies. This is true to a certain extent. However, its two natural foods stores, are currently sourcing at least two of their beans--cannellini and black beans--from CHINA. To say this is appalling is an understatement. I have had to resort to buying these two beans directly from Italy myself, thus incurring huge shipping fees. I cannot understand how anyone thinks it is okay to get these beans from China. The shops claim that their distributors are who orders from China. This is unacceptable. I have to say that, having moved from the U.S., my husband and I are super frustrated that we actually had far better access to truly LOCALLY grown organic foods than we do here in Ireland! I am spending so much time and money to avoid these supposedly "organic" beans from China. I continue to be shocked that our access to truly organic food NOT from China has become a time-consuming process for us. And just to let you know, we are very much Gen-Xers as we are both aged 57 so it is not only youngsters who care and who are sacrificing financially to buy from small producers.
Coming from the US, I find it much easier to identify local products and produce in Portugal. But the multi-nationals are definitely encroaching.