It’s where the Girl Scouts set up their cookie-selling tables, and community groups host bake sales in the parking lot. In the store, Barragan inevitably runs into students, former students, parents of students, and fellow teachers; sometimes it takes forever to get a simple errand done because of all the neighborly small talk. — Talking Points Memo
Rachel Monroe examines how in rural America WalMart has become the new town square.
13 Comments
What a preachy article, the comments even more so. I would hardly say Walmart killed the small town, or crowned itself town hub. Dwindling populations in rural areas are really what has killed the small town in the US, and that is a byproduct of mega farms and mechanization. Farming used to be a family thing, but really hasn't been for years, so when the kids grow up they know they have to leave to make it. With that exodus the supporting economies of the small towns have collapsed. The idyllic scene of what rural America once was or could be that most city dwellers use as their basis for arguments against the big box store is of a bygone era that, barring apocalypse, will never be seen again, nor was a really a long-lasting era. For the most part, Walmart and the other big box stores have allowed small town to keep some working age folks around, otherwise they have no choice but to leave. Now I sound preachy, but this is from watching my family's hometown dwindle has agribusiness has taken over the family farm economy there. Even with no Walmart for 50 miles the down town closed down, the last grocery store is a overpriced racket, and the yearly exodus after school is out will take your breath away.
Its a combination of factors, but big box stores are certainly a major part of the problem with our centralized economy....Mainly what wal-mart and big corporations have done is to shrink the ownership class and expand the worker class...One wal-mart can replace dozens of small independently owned businesses with a single corporate owner 1000 miles away...Removing local influence from the marketplace...selling processed garbage grown by monsanto and a handfull of other criminals...poison...Culturally, wal-mart and others like it have ruined community networks and have destroyed the personal relationship with the marketplace. The marketplace is probably the most important community space in any town and any culture. We used to buy bread from Bill the baker, now we buy it from Wal-mart...
Mr_Wiggin: Stats are available that state 97% of farms in the US are still tied to a family, even if it's a family owned corporation.
The organic food types and PETA have tried, and succeeded in convincing the public that food is being produced in a factory setting. It's fairly incorrect.
I'm not saying that the family owned corporations and larger farms aren't producing on a very industrial scale. Many are. Still there are many, many family farms still out there; they have all probably increased in size to meet consumer demand, though.
Those farms are huge in scale when compared to those existing during the heyday of small town America, and they don't require the amount of labor they used to either. Times have changed, it's sad to see these towns die off, but the big box stores are only symptomatic of the economy that has lead to the degradation of the small town.
Mr_Wiggin it's a chicken and egg situation now: Walmart was a cause when it first started undercutting small businesses, now it's a symptom of how near impossible it is to run a small business in a competitive market. And so on.
I guess in my experience I've just seen too many small towns die without a nearby Walmart to blame. Not to say they weren't complicit, but far from the devil they're made out to be in popular culture.
the farms are huge and are essentially controlled by a few big corps that own patents on the seeds, have the families in debt to them. Its a new form of indentured servitude. The pressure to produce more and more per acre has made these farms rely on gmo pesticide herbicide resistant crops...Farms with a Bad drug addiction...and the corporations like monsanto are basically selling the smack...Big agriculture is also propped up by govt subsidies and they buy politicians like hookers.
No surprise that after the Haiti quake Monsanto came in and offered roundup resistant seeds to the farmers....The protested and burned them....Pretty obvious why...
Fourtunatly, the public has become aware of how bad this crap is for us...Ive seen a huge increase in small farmers markets...The 21st century farmer is also not in some rural area living off acres of crops, but rather growing in suburban or urban gardens and using the yeild as a supplimental income or supplimental food source...I have a friend who has about 20 pomegranate trees in her suburban yard...she sells them at the market and makes a good supplimental income...Another friend grows about 50 different crops and basically suppliments 2/3 of his families food needs. This trend is being combated by local authorities, hoas, and dept or agricultures bs fascist regulators...all of course being honeydicked by big agriculture.
The people you're talking about don't even reach the level of subsistence farmers. Without large farms, you cannot begin to feed the massive population that has no food production capability.
I don't know anyone whose farm is 'controlled' by a big corp. I know some who have contracts for a portion of their production with a big corp. They are far from controlled.
I am speaking from direct experience regarding farms btw... not what I'm being fed by a propaganda machine on either side of the fence.
The people you're talking about don't even reach the level of subsistence farmers. Without large farms, you cannot begin to feed the massive population that has no food production capability.
I didn't claim that they did reach that level. I said that they supplement their income and diet...No reason that this cannot be done on a community scale using proven clean technologies like aquaponics to increase yeilds...Big agriculture is bad for the environment, for health, and for communities.
The idea that we need monoculture and big agriculture with their patented gmo seeds is complete bullshit. We can yield just as much food per acre with a permaculture farm, the difference is that it is nearly impossible to operate such a business on a corporate level...It must be decentralized and local which is why the big corps came up with the bullshit propaganda to support their disgusting methods of pumping the ground with poison. Lets not even talk about the havoc it reaps on the soil, the bees, etc...We don't have to farm like the Mayans or the 18th century Americans, but we can farm clean and local and still feed the population. Most of the shitty empty calories we fill our bodies up with are corn based garbage....1 acre to produce corn to create Doritos is not exactly "feeding the population." With that same acre real healthy foods could be grown...Yes maybe less volume, but greater nutrition per calorie ratios...
Vaporous article. Too many factors completely unaccounted for here from part-time minimum wage employees subsidized by taxpayers (who can't afford to shop anywhere else) to the crushing strength of titanic corporations that allows domination of not just of markets but of entire production chains to the disproportionate political power bestowed by massive accumulation of wealth.
Hoosiermamas brawling in a WalMart.
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