You are what (you can) eat
Food…Water…Shelter these should be foremost in our minds.
Where did your family go for groceries when you were a kid? For the longest time we were a “Dominion” household. Thursday evening’s Mom, Dad and I loaded up and went to the Dominion store at Walker and Tecumseh Roads. I can remember the big safe at the front of the store by the check-outs although, I don’t know how many time I tried to “crack” that safe. One day the Dominion store closed and we had to go further east on Tecumseh Road to Central to the A&P there. The A&P was bigger and newer and best of all in the “mall” was Windsor Hobbies. While my parents shopped I watched the trains go around …
Somewhere along the way grocery stores stopped being grocery stores. They stopped serving neighbourhoods. Now they are super-stores and their super-size means they no longer fit into local communities.
Consider New York City. According to a story in the May 5, 2008 New York Times there are only 550 supermarkets (10,000 sq ft or larger) in the city of New York. A study by the city’s Department of City Planning reported that 3 million residents lived in high-need neighbourhoods (those areas with not enough supermarkets and high incidence of health problems). The study goes on to say that the demand for grocery stores in the city is great enough for up to 100 more stores. The problems they say are high rents and low profit margins keep new stores away. Many people are left to buy their foods at drug stores or bodegas (variety stores). These are typically processed, pre-packaged foods and not fresh or whole foods. A large number of people interviewed for the study indicated they had not eaten any fresh fruit or vegetables in the past day. The high incidence of health problems cited included heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
Imagine a population in the OEDC where the people at the greatest risk don’t have access to healthy, nutritious foods. Now what if the grocery stores in your city started to close because their profit margins were so tight that the company had to close or consolidate their locations?
Avery Shenfeld of CIBC World Markets Inc. reports that Canadians had better prepare for food inflation. Shenfeld projects food inflation in 2009 will top out at 3.5%. To put that in some context food inflation is currently running at around 0.4% and overall inflation is averaging 3%. The reasons for this jump in our grocery bill vary. In some cases like fresh fruit from the United States we have not seen the same kind of increases that people in the US have seen because of the movement of our currency relative to theirs. Or, when it comes to dairy products (and some other foodstuffs) Canadians don’t see rapid price changes because the prices are regulated by marketing boards. Still, as the cost of feed for livestock continues to rise and transportation and petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides go up in price Canadians will start to see this cost passed on to us in 2009 by Mr. Shenfeld’s reckoning.
The other major problem with Canadian grocery stores that the CIBC report highlights is that profit margins have been decreasing for several years now. It is now getting so low that some stores are barely breaking even. This is the result of competition from U.S. based stores moving into new markets and higher overhead costs.
What do I make of all this? Rising energy costs, transportation costs and labour costs in combination with stiff competition from other chains will result IMO in store closings, most likely the stores with the lowest profits - the no-frills, bargain stores - which will affect those that are most vulnerable to rising household costs. If you look at the poorest areas of our city they are served by these types of stores. This is the kind of thing we can expect in our Brave New World where the basics have been removed from neighbourhoods. What they are seeing in New York City can easily happen here.
Tags: big box retail, local business, obesity, planning department, relocalization
Post Feedback
The profit margins on food are very low to begin with…..The large Superstores have put a formula in place that maximizes profit…including the minimum number of sqare feet, the minimum amount of parking per store (which dictates location), and other factors that dictate against locating in core areas.
However, Sobey’s has shown a willingness to be flexible when it comes to these factors, especially if one can make a solid business case for it. The other alternative is a private grocer…..but life can be tough for private grocers unless they are filling a specialty niche.
How about a tax-free status for grocery stores? They do it for the church, and arguably, grocery stores provide a much more necessary service and goods.
You can survive without a god, but try going a week without food.
Now - don’t everybody jump on the heathen, OK? The lightening bolt will get him in due time
Chris, thats not the worst idea ever, but I would also tie in a smaller footprint requirement.
Yes, you don’t want to be making it any easier for these Sooper Grocery Centres. Give the little guy running the neighbourhood grocery a break though. It’s hard enough competing on the price front with the sooper centres and Walmart alike. Anyone remember Schincariol’s? Places like that were the best.
Good post and thoughts James! If Food Basics left the core and Price Choppers on Tecumseh and Crawford don’t clean up their stores, I would move out of the downtown in a minute and after 18 years. And yes I am waiting for food inflation to hit and hit hard. Food Basics is the only saving grace for me in the core at this moment.
The peach grower in the Star the other day, having to pull up all his peach trees because the last fresh fruit canner east of the Rockies in Canada is going out of business, well actually moving somewhere else other than Canada and he is not the only fresh fruit grower in Ontario that is doing that.
Pork producers in Canada are being bought out by the Feds because the bottom has fallen out of the industry and Canadian farmers can’t compete with the rest of the world. Wheat prices have yet to climb to the stratosphere but are heading that way. Corn and Soyabeans just the same.
It might be a coming problem in this city if the cheapies move but it might be a problem in sprawlsville also. With the sprawlers being squeezed by higher gas prices and higher food prices, they might reduce their driving and their shopping and those supermarkets on the fringe are also probably running on tight margins. Costco and Wal-mart just might win this round against the national chains and food producing countries other than Canada until they have to negoiate new contracts with food suppliers in China and everywhere else other than here.
Three frozen Cod fillets for ten dollars in Food Basics the other day..Made in China. Asparagus, frozen 47 cents more than fresh from Mexico at three dollars a bunch (which when I got it home and steamed it it HAD NO TASTE!) a product of China. Cod from China and tasteless asparagus from Mexico is there something wrong with this ever growing picture, while we build over some of the best farm land in the world.
One day the trucks carrying food from everywhere else are going to stop coming to Windsor and then what! We take it oh so fore granted that we will always have cheap food and it will magically appear every day for us! Cheap and abundant!
If you think that our local farmers can sustain us in this region for long periods of time, you haven’t taken a close look lately.
Food security is also part of a sustainable city.
A new book just published:
Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture. Revised Edition, Chelsea House pub. 2008
Community Supported Agriculture - CSA website is here:
http://www.tdc.ca/csa.htm
I was hoping to include that article however, I think I can use it in the future. In that story the cannery that is closing is the only one of its kind in Canada. The only cannery apparently left in N.A. of that type is in California.
ONE CANNERY LEFT TO SERVE ALL OF NORTH AMERICA.
Anyone else see a problem with that?
Ok, so what about growing your own supplemental food? Many urban homes have at least some greenspace. Why have grass when you can grow food? Not enough space? Try http://www.squarefootgardening.com — a great idea for low space gardening with high yields. Sure, there won’t be pineapples or bananas, but most other vegetables can be grown, and some vine or plant fruits as well. CSAs are great too! Out here in PEI the capital city has an area where you can have a garden, free of charge, in the centre of the city. Now that’s innovative!
I used to be a member of Sere Farms CSA out in Kingsville. Their organic produce was delivered into Windsor (to Pine River Farms, or something like that, in South Windsor) for pick-up. I used to take the kids out to the farm once a month to help harvest and pack up the members boxes, It was a great way for my kids to connect with the land, their food, and the people responsible for growing it. Unfortunately, they closed up shop and now I make due with (mostly) imported foods at the Ottawa Street Market. Anyone know of any local CSA’s still in operation?
I noticed the the Phoenix Gardens (?), a community garden on the rail land behind the Caboto Club, aren’t operating any longer. That’s a shame.
Also, check out the group FedUp! if you want to get involved in some local urban agriculture.
I will be writing more about this in the near future, as my mind has been wandering over to the world of the global Slow Food movement.
let me know what you got cooking up chris. i’m working on something too maybe we can collaborate! there’s a slow food convivium here in windsor but it doesn’t seem to be active.
i’m in the midst of preparing a little plot in my backyard. growing up we always had a garden in the backyard, my mom baked her own bread and we made our own tomato sauce every year. but as my parents got older and were a little better off financially they got rid of the garden and we stopped baking bread (we still make sauce although we didn’t last year and we’re now in what we like to call sugo crisis 08″).
maybe with the imminent rise in food prices we’ll find people going back to how things were done in the “old days”. baking your own bread, hanging your clothes out to dry, riding your bike or walking to work. maybe. people can be very hard set in their ways, regardless of the disastrous effects of their actions.
it’s just a matter of rethinking how we do things and coming to the realizaton that we cannot continue on the path we are currently on.
I’ve been in love with the idea of growing my own produce in my backyard. People with limited space or unforgiving yards/soils or balconies can look into container gardening. An indespensible book on this is The Bountiful Container, which gives directions on growing edible plants/flowers/etc in addition to just normal potted flowers.
I also try and stop at the roadside produce stands in the county when I get the chance.
I grew my own tomatos and peppers in my backyard garden but did it only for one year. Not sure why I didn’t keep up with it because it was quite easy and very rewarding. After visiting the FedUp link providing elsewhere on this site, I’m inspired to do the same this year. It’s not too late to plant!