Healthy Food Access and Food Covenants

Reflections from Rich Pirog, 2023 FSLN Mentor and former Director for the Center for Regional Food Systems at Michigan State University (MSU) through spring 2022 

There are a variety of strategies to increase healthy food access in communities that do not have equitable access to a full line supermarket selling healthy affordable food.  Many people working to address disparities in healthy food access acknowledge and accept the narrative that market forces compelled food retailers to abandon urban supermarkets and move to the suburbs.  What is less known is that many food retailers who abandoned their urban stores put in place restrictive covenants in their deeds of sale that essentially blocked that location to be used for a food retail establishment for 10 to 40 years.  Food retailers reasoned they would retain these customers, who would drive to the suburbs to shop since they no longer had a food store nearby. These food retailer practices have contributed to the structural racism in our food system because many low-income urban residents do not own or have easy access to a car to drive to the new store in the suburbs. These residents are left with poor access to healthy food choices.  Further examination of this common food retail practice points to its anti-competitive nature and possible violation of U.S. anti-trust law.  Our food system policy work has historically not shed adequate light on what policy and legal strategies can challenge the anti-competitive nature of using covenants to prevent a food retailer to re-establish a full line food store in an existing, abandoned location. 

You will find several recent articles that dig deep into this issue in the 10^th edition of the Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism Present in the U.S. Food System, published by the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems.  The 10^th edition has 143 new articles, reports, bulletins, webinar recordings, and videos that shed light on the structural racism in our food system.  The extensive bibliography now has more than 650 total citations.  A Zotero group library is available for the references cited in this bibliography. Zotero is a free software that lets users easily save, manage, and cite sources for their articles, reports and grant proposals.  You can access the 10^th edition here.