All Shoppers are NOT Created Equal:

The Automobile, the Supermarket, and the Inequity in Poughkeepsie Food Access

By Justin Soderholm

The City of Poughkeepsie experienced a detrimental blow to its food security on March 7, 1992, when the last of its supermarkets, a Grand Union, closed its doors. For decades now, the City of Poughkeepsie has been struggling to make obtaining fresh food easy and convenient for local consumers. Most food suppliers have now relocated to the suburban Town of Poughkeepsie. Yet, only 1 out of every 4 families in the City of Poughkeepsie has their own means of transportation and all of these families either need to take a car, bus, or taxi to avoid attempting a treacherous walk across busy highways in order to complete their heavy-duty shopping outside the city limits. Even though crime plagued the Grand Union and its produce was notorious for being “virtually inedible,” the supermarket provided proximate food access for senior citizens with impaired mobility or those of all age brackets lacking personal transportation. Public forms of transportation in the city either do not cater to weekly shopping needs or detract an exorbitant sum from many families’ already limited income. Sensible and ready access to fresh, healthy foods must be provided to residents of the city regardless of their transportation accessibility.

The modern supermarket works under the assumption that it does not need to be at its patrons’ doorsteps. The rising popularity of the automobile in the past half-century has maintained a steady supply of customers for the modern supermarket. But those who once enjoyed cities’ walking-distance proximity to local shopping no longer have feasible destinations to walk to. Therefore, since many city residents cannot be expected to regularly conduct their shopping outside of the city limits, stores selling affordable, healthy, and fresh foods must reopen in the heart of Poughkeepsie.
Poughkeepsie Before and After the Automobile

There once was a time when owning an automobile in Poughkeepsie was not important in order to have access to fresh foods. Companies such as Hager and Fitchett Brothers brought a number of meats, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products right to their customers’ doors before the automobile became a more affordable means of transport. In 1957, over 100 retail grocery stores operated in the city, a number that would shrink by more than 75 percent in just over a thirty-year period. Independent retailers, many of whom forged partnerships with local food producers, simply could not compete with the volume-hungry, warehouse-driven supermarkets expanding their dominance over the main arteries of greater Dutchess County. In fact, so much of the volume of Poughkeepsie shoppers shifted to the outskirts that even some of these corporate supermarkets were unable to compete with one another. In Spring of 2000, Stop and Shop on Dutchess Turnpike relocated to a neighboring location, became Super Stop and Shop, and propelled the nearby Shop Rite to close its doors later that same year. Providing consumers with their vital food resources is now seen more than ever as an opportunity for capitalistic gain and for competitors to overlook their responsibilities as crucial components of the American food system and the nourishment of this nation’s citizens.

The Work of a Benevolent Few

Few will argue that food is vital to the maintenance of human life, that availability of food should outweigh profit in importance to sustaining humanity. Yet, those benevolent entrepreneurs who attempt to make nutritious, fresh foods readily available in sparsely-occupied commercial areas such as Poughkeepsie often find themselves in the red, if not lucky enough to just break even in keeping their business open. For example, Frank, the owner of the former Main Mall Green Grocer on Main Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, worked an additional part-time job just so he can keep his store open. “I feel [my store] serves a purpose in the community… You get a major supermarket in here, they’re not going to do that. They’re not going to be part of the neighborhood,” Frank explained. The far-away corporate eye of any of its local supermarkets exists far beyond the City of Poughkeepsie limits. Therefore, the Queen City often relies on its own citizens, who are most directly affected by urban food insecurity, to become an active part of the solution.

A Global Concern

Yet, even if Poughkeepsie is able to win over the profit-driven heart of a major chain supermarket, the quest to provide locally sustainable, nutritious, if not organic foods for City of Poughkeepsie citizens is by no means complete. Most produce sold in larger grocery chains in the greater Poughkeepsie area, especially those fruits and vegetables available out of season for the area, are imported from numerous countries and continents where laws protecting workers’ health and well-being may not meet the standards covering American laborers. The table grape industry of Chile, which meets the demands of numerous American consumers who enjoy the fruit year round, is a prime example of a food source in which the labor standards of the United States are not applicable in protecting workers participating in this industry.

One manner in which table grape harvesters, packers, and otherwise seasonal employees of Chilean fruit companies are disadvantaged by their country’s labor structure is that they often are not directly paid and protected by the company themselves, but rather managed through a third party known as the contratista, a middleman who often pockets most of the capital furnished to him by the company meant to pay the workers. If employees complain about their meager salaries, benevolent companies can raise the regular amount of money given to the contratista, but the contratista’s mercy is the ultimate deciding factor of the employees’ fate. Such a disadvantageous system of company-employee relations in Chile is fairly common and there is no promise that this system will be eradicated in the near future.

What’s Already There and Where It Can Lead Poughkeepsie

Agricultural rebirth and revitalization are no longer tucked away neatly in a far-off corner of the City of Poughkeepsie on the Vassar College Farm. In fact, a walk near Poughkeepsie’s most troubled neighborhoods near Tubman Terrace Houses or Columbus Elementary School are proud owners of bright, lively gardens constructed by the youth of various Poughkeepsie neighborhoods. Each week in a classroom of Poughkeepsie High School, a dozen students interested in gaining hands-on experience and employable skills at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project (PFP) congregate to learn about charity and social change before they show up bright and early at the farm each summer morning for a rewarding day’s work. The same Poughkeepsie High School students working at PFP are tending the local farmer’s market in the heart of Poughkeepsie’s Main Street shopping district during the summer months through the Green Teen component of Cornell Cooperative Extension. Community residents do, though only at the moment for the summertime interim, have some access to local, fresh, community-supported foods.

The potential for recent progress to carry itself further is out there. Poughkeepsie youth will continue to take charge of planting gardens in their neighborhoods as a means of showing their adult neighbors that citizens of all ages can play a vital role in investing in their community. The farmer’s market can inspire many other community-staffed, community-supported food security measures that can bring more shoppers back onto the eager revitalized sidewalks of downtown. Supermarkets are owned and operated by company heads based in locations far away from the communities they serve. Community-based endeavors are just the opposite. Not only does community-supported fresh food access make healthy food choices available in the heart of the community; it offers food from the heart. Try finding that at your local supermarket.