Walmart Food Desert

You have probably already heard all about the Walmart stores that are going out of buisness. Not all Walmarts are closing but a nice amount of them are. I have to be honest, thought, I'm not really surprised. Walmart has never been my favorite store. It's the store I go to when no other place has what I'm looking for, and there is just not enough time to order it online. Or when I need to re-stock on my camping gear.

Wal-Mart is destroying our, as Americans, culture and environment. Wal-Mart destroys little shops from our towns, shops that were built by natives and hard-working people. Shops that overcame hardships and reasonable competition are being torn apart one by one in order not to cause too many people filing bankruptcy. Wetlands in America are not being taken care of, as they should. Wetlands are homes and safety nets for many animals. Wal-Mart has destroyed many wetlands in order to build a store in some town people do not even want there.

Wal-Mart increase completion in the area where it is located and lower prices for all consumers. Without Wal-Mart in these areas, prices will be higher and consumers would pay more. Wal-Mart prevents monopolies from occurring and encourages competition which is a very important principle of capitalism. Even Bruce Bartlett, a former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the United States Treasury department, talks about the importance of Wal-Mart. He worries that all the backlash and this war against Wal-Mart by critics would negatively affect poor families who relies and needs Wal-Mart (Maich 6). He continues that there is no one representing the people who benefit from Wal-Mart the most, the poor, in these debates. (Maich 6) He concluded that “If you’re stuck with a low income and you can reduce the amount you pay for basic items, then your real income goes up” (Maich 6) This statement shows how Wal-Mart is a necessity for poor people and how it help poor people to save money. Thanks to Wal-Mart people are saving money and could budget more for other items.

One huge problem that the United States faces today are the large numbers of food deserts. A food desert, according to the United States department of Agriculture, is a neighborhood that has a difficult time getting quality and affordable food to their home. This means that people are not properly being fed and getting the nutrition needed for a healthy diet. The good quality food that is needed to maintain this balance is not near or affordable for the people living in these areas. Food deserts affect many people across the United States, especially those that are on the lower end of the social economic spectrum and live in rural areas. Many of these low-income families do not have the means to get to the supermarket and get the right products they need so they settle for lower quality but more cost efficient foods. A great example for a food desert would be the great city of Chicago who is ranked in the top two worst food deserts in the United State according to newsone.com.

At the beginning of 2016, Walmart closed nearly 269 stores around the world, costing the company 1 billion dollars in the process. This shift was due to their financial performance in a move to focus more on supercenters and e-commerce. There will be closures in 154 locations within the United States and include all 102 of Walmart’s “Express” format stores, 115 stores in Latin American markets as well as some supercenters and Sam’s Club stores. It has been seen in the

In a lower income neighborhood such as Pullman, where there are not many grocery stores. These neighborhoods lack all kinds of resources that they need to be able to access these grocery stores, such as, money and transportation. “There's nothing here in the community for us to shop at," (Schorsch, 2009) said Saiesha Anderson, 28, who suggests that city officials transform the vacant lots and boarded up shops in Pullman into groceries stocked with fresh foods. Rev. James Meeks called Pullman a food desert because, the closest store with fresh produce is a Jewel that is located at 11730 S. Marshfield Ave., which would be a few miles from some families homes depending on where their homes are located. "In our neighborhood, the only thing you can buy is something greasy in a bag," (Schorsch, 2009) said Rev. Meeks. Meeks wants the Chicago aldermen and Chicago’s union leaders to allow Walmart to build a store on the South Side, home to some of the city's poorest communities.

As you may have noticed by now, Wal-Mart has wiped out all/any small or family businesses when they first open in a small town/city. Take Lacombe, Alberta for an example. Lacombe is ranked with the #1 spot in all of Canada to have the best downtown. The whole reason for this is because Lacombe does not have any business like Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, or Costco etc to wipe out any smaller

Focusing solely on grocery and convenience store accessibility fails to address the accessibility barriers residents in food deserts face, such as long walking distances and limited public transportation. Unfortunately, most public transportation systems do not consider convenient access to grocery stores when designing their routes. Different policies and programs aimed at improving access to healthy food in food deserts using transportation include transit subsidies, store shuttle services, and improved bus routes. Programs have also been implemented among corner store retailers to improve the availability and quality of food options throughout food

Walmart is an American Multinational retail corporation, that operates chains of large discount stores and warehouse stores. The Walmart corporation isn’t what they may seem to portray themselves as. The arrival of a Walmart Super-center often has harmful effects on the local economy; for example, Supermarkets and discount variety stores are most affected by the opening of Walmart, local owners of these stores suffer sales declines of 10 to 40% after Walmart opens.

As of 1994, Wal-Mart had 2,504 stores across the U.S. and was expected to open 125 more that year (Ortega 205). Wal-Mart stores do over $67 billion dollars in annual sales (Norman 207). A Wal-Mart store in Iowa, after being open for two years and building its base, can generate $10 million a year in sales. A Wal-Mart store planned for Greenfield, Mass. would have employed 274 people (Anderson 218) or 240 people (Johnston 222), depending on which source you read. Discount stores like Wal-Mart allow small to medium towns with little population growth to hold customers to the local shopping area by cutting down on trips by locals to bigger urban areas with lower prices (Stone 210). With all of these benefits, why would anyone be upset about a Wal-Mart store opening in their town?

Wal-Mart exhibits a huge and thriving presence in the fluctuating society of business. The company, at the time of this writing, guided over 3,400 stores in the United States, as well as over 550 Sam’s Club establishments (Basker, 2007). Wal-Mart has become one of, if not the, largest merchant in the U.S. and abroad thanks to an individual who envisioned a prosperous future.

When a new Wal-Mart is built in a community many people complain that the store does all kinds of damage to their community. Including but not limited to putting small local businesses at risk of closing down and hurting the economy in their community. However according to some Wal-Mart actually improves the economy of any community that it enters. And while it may force local competitors to close down this is not necessarily a bad thing.

This paper is a meta-analysis of five different papers on the effect of Wal-Mart stores in urban and rural counties of USA. It also tries to find some valuable information about the wage and employment level in those counties and also in the adjacent and non-adjacent counties. Also, the paper discusses about the increase and decrease in the number of small retail stores in the counties where Wal-Mart is having its discount or super store.

Wal-Mart has had immense success since its inception in the early1960s, having been able to expand globally by offering a large selection of products at low prices. While Wal-Mart has enjoyed this success, many independently owned businesses have been unable to compete with the retail giant’s economies of scale. Local businesses, such as grocery stores, pharmacies, pet stores and flower shops, have suffered from the creation of a Wal-Mart in many cities across the United States. According to a report released by Wal-Mart Watch back in 2005, Wal-Mart’s expansion in Iowa is “solely responsible for the extensive closings of mom-and-pop stores, including 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building suppliers, 161 variety shops, 158 women’s stores, and 116 pharmacies” (Sobel). Then there is also the Chicago area WalMart that casued “82 of 306 small businesses in the surrounding neighborhood” to shutter their doors “within 18 month’s” (Casey). Its because of events like this that New York City has fought hard to keep Walmart out of its city and shows how a Wal-Mart in the Houston Heights will be no different. Closures of small businesses will cause a ripple effect, causing suppliers and supporting businesses to close and consequently cause pains that may be felt for years to come in the

Like the domestic competitors did, Wal-Mart may consider opening smaller scale supermarkets in lower income / rural cities with reasonably large populations which offer basic necessities at good value and good service. The smaller variety of goods would suffice to meet the needs of the rural cities and alleviate the cost of holding a wide inventory.