Super Value Closes: Sad Farewell

The News. The news popped up on my Facebook feed at about 2:30 p.m. today--the grocery store in my county, Vinton County, Ohio, is closing its doors. Reactions and reactionaries weighed in on news reports and posts about the shuttering of Super Value. Anger. Hostility. Shock. Sadness. Bewilderment. Fear. Will another store open? What will happen to our community if we have to have a reliable car and gas money to go get bread and milk to avoid paying inflated prices at a convenience store? What will happen to our community if fresh fruit, meat, and vegetables are no longer available? If we go to another community for groceries, will we neglect other local services and institutions?

Food Desert. There's a concept in public health called the urban food desert. These are areas in cities that have no access to a traditional grocery store. In these areas, the poorest people end up paying a considerably higher proportion of their income for food than any other income group. They are left with convenience store prices and selections, paying a considerable health cost as well as taking the financial hit. Convenience store food tends toward the fatty, salty, and sugary. A pretty red apple may cost $2.50--the same price as four boxes of mac & cheese (one dessert versus four whole meals) for the same money. If you had a family to feed on limited funds, which would you choose? These are the facts of a food desert.

Profit Margin, Not Neighbor. Well, we are at risk of becoming our very own food desert. We've flocked to Walmart. Now it may be our only home. I have to say that if I was poor, I would move. I would move closer to a Walmart, frankly. That's where the food is, where it is massively subsidized by a hundred federal tax loopholes. Walmart and other big store chains care about your money, about the volume of customers they can process through a giant intestine of products. They will never care about you like Maryjane Ferguson and her employees have always cared about you. The clerk ringing you up at Walmart won't know your name and won't know that your mom is sick and that your sister just finished a semester at Rio Grande Community College. You are now a profit margin instead of a neighbor.

There are many other downsides to the closing of our local store. Several people are losing their jobs--and replacement jobs just don't exist around here. Property values will drop--would you happily move into a community with no grocery store? Poor people may have to depend more and more on institutions such as schools and food pantries for food.

Support Ferguson. I've been disturbed by Facebook posts that express anger and hostility at Ferguson for closing Super Value. Surely people have seen that the store is struggling to keep its shelves stocked, seen the efforts at new programs to bring customers into the store. Ferguson has been pouring her life's blood into the store to keep it going, especially since the bad storm in the summer of 2012 during which the store had no power and almost all of the inventory was lost.

Maryjane Ferguson is not a Walmart with massive financing and buying power behind her. She knows the impact of this closing and I know it is breaking her heart, as it breaks the hearts of all who know her and her family. Ferguson is just one woman who has been fighting valiantly against considerable odds. She's greeted each disastrous day with courage and an open heart. She's not responsible for a crappy economy, natural disasters, or the movement of local shoppers to a big box store.

I'm sure more news is yet to come. But I hope we remember how well Super Value has served our community, has been a meeting place, a caring place. Super Value is where you run into people from all parts of your life--people from work, from school, from church, from 4-H. We will never replace this.