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?
Sometimes I think about stealing sheep.
I saw plenty of them last week when I visited my family in Wales, a country well known for having more sheep than people.
I can 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.
