Groceries and Poverty
What a kick! I was wandering around the house this morning getting ready for church and I started thinking about our situation with the grocery store and locker. I thought to myself, “You know, if people need to invest as a community to keep our store going, would that be so bad?” I calculated that if I had to drive to Fessenden, Carrington, or Harvey once a week to buy groceries, it would cost between $5.00 to $10.00 a trip, and that’s at today’s prices for gas. At that rate, including the 00ps-I-forgot trips, I’d get back a $1,000.00 investment in two years just in fuel savings.
Then, lo and behold, I opened today’s Bismarck Tribune and read an article that was reprinted from the Grant County News. It confirmed in a very vivid and factual way what many of us have been saying all along: shopping at home makes sense. There is very little price difference in town and out of town, and the cost of fuel negates any savings. In fact, it makes out-of-town groceries prohibitively expensive. If we want to make sure that people on fixed or limited incomes–and I’m one of the fixed–can afford to feed themselves with healthy and nutritious foods, we must work to keep our local grocery store and locker plant open and thriving.
Be sure to attend the 7:30 p.m. June 3rd meeting at the Community Center to see how you can be involved.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Sure makes sense to me to keep the groceries and locker plant local - we are without both and can add $8.00 to a trip to the grocery store with the gas prices where they are at now. I know we are not driving as much as we did last year. The elderly in the small communities are the ones that suffer as they don’t drive - especially out of town. Good Luck!
June 6th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I liked this post and the Bismarck Tribune article link. Gackle folks do a ot of shopping in Jamestown. There is a new super Walmart opening in June and I imagine its lure will intoxicating for some. I think we need to do some similar calculating so people really understand that they might not be saving money and in the long run are hurting the local economy. And its only going to get more costly.