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What happens when a town loses its only grocery store?

The former grocery store in the village of Carrollton, Ohio, looks like your typical creepy abandoned building. It’s dark inside. It’s boarded up with moldy wood.

Last January, residents of Carrollton — population 3,135 — showed up to find the doors locked and a sign attached that read, simply, “store closed.” It was the only dedicated grocery store in a county of nearly 28,000 people.

Carrollton is located in eastern Ohio’s Carroll County, about a 40-minute drive from Canton. Tait Carter, the county’s economic development director, peered through the doors of the 30,000 square foot building. She said the place shut down abruptly.

“The electric company came in and shut the electric off, and all of the food was still left in all the coolers,” Carter said. “I don’t even want to imagine what it smelled like in there.”

This store was owned by Thorne’s Market, a local grocery chain founded in 1972. The company closed its four stores in January and disconnected its phone. The owners haven’t given a reason.

“I think they’d been struggling for a while,” Carter said.

Even before Thorne’s closed, Carroll County was a food desert. In rural places, that’s a low-income area where at least 500 people or one-third of the population live more than 10 miles from the nearest supermarket or large grocery store. About 4.5 million Americans live in rural food deserts, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“In the Mississippi Delta, in rural Kansas, in upstate New York — in every rural community across the country, you’re hearing about a food-access challenge,” said Julia Koprak, a senior associate at a nonprofit called The Food Trust.

…(read more)

Food-matters,

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Living In a Food Desert Documentary

VSUOfficialChannelPublished on Mar 4, 2015

Across Virginia – from Hampton to Richmond, Petersburg to Lynchburg to Wise County and all points in between – approximately 17.8 percent of Virginia’s population live in food desert. This documentary was produced by VSU as part of a study on food insecurity in the College of Agriculture. Produced by Jesse Vaughan & Cedric Owens – Co-Producer Dr. Jewel Hairston – Narrator Daphne Maxwell Reid

Food-matters,