Our supermarkets survived the lockdowns, but can they weather the coming storm? Perhaps now more than ever we need to ask God’s blessing on the people who get the food to our tables.
When I was young, my father would often say grace before dinner, thanking God for the food we were about to receive. Inevitably he would conclude with, “And God bless the hands that prepared it.”
As a child, my parents were quick to teach that this wasn’t just a blessing for my mother, who stereotypically prepared all our family meals. Instead, they would point out that “the hands that prepared it” meant everyone from the farmer, to the farmhand, to the butcher, to the truck driver hauling the product to market; and everyone in between.
Since I grew up in a fertile farm area of black muck land, “farmhands” to us usually meant documented seasonal workers from Mexico; laborers who perennially came north to harvest crops like onions, celery, Boston and Iceberg lettuce, carrots, and spinach.
Not only was I learning to pray for the diverse people who came together to create my meal, but I was learning the basics of entrepreneurial capitalism!
I was reminded of these nostalgic memories after watching Charlie Kirk’s similar break down of the free market in his recent video, “If You Think Food is Expensive Now, Just Wait.” His subsequent video makes the case that food lines could come to America.
Mr. Kirk begins by explaining that a ban on price gouging in America would require going after farmers, distributors, and trucking companies. “When there are price controls…producers produce less because they make more money and there will be supply shortages — and then prices will really go up.”
Mr. Kirk, the 30-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, then introduces a new generation to the Nobel award-winning economist Milton Friedman with the video clip “I, Pencil,” taken from Friedman’s 1980 PBS television show, Free to Choose. In the clip, Mr. Friedman does a synoptic retelling of author Leonard Read’s original “I, Pencil” essay first published in 1958.
The clip outlines the complex process that creates a “simple pencil” – from sourcing raw materials like wood, graphite and metal, to the assembly and distribution that happens before it eventually ends up in someone’s hand.
Mr. Kirk then expounds on free market capitalism in his next video saying, “We have it so good in America that we don’t even teach our kids [that] a grocery store is a modern miracle.”
We can, however, thank the pandemic lockdowns for the fact that people were briefly forced to appreciate their local stores in a way they never had before. The learning process came as folks searched for toilet paper, hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies and various food items, often being told by store associates that “the truck had not come in yet.” Worse yet, people were often told that coveted items “were not on the truck” and there was no assurance they’d be on the next truck. That’s how truck drivers came to be regarded as heroes of the lockdown.
So while there were undoubtedly various reasons for shortages during the lockdowns, it at least became clear to a large segment of the population that a lot had to happen behind the scenes before items magically reappeared on store shelves.
And that was a good thing because we are currently living in a time when the majority of people are both apathetic and clueless as to where their food and dry goods come from. For instance, shoppers may look for “organic” blueberries, but don’t realize the package they’re buying was shipped nearly 4000 miles from Peru to the United States — the country that ironically leads the world in blueberry production. Meanwhile there’s been a clarion call for goods “Made in the USA,” but the fact remains that only about 11% of American-bought goods are manufactured here, compared to 80% forty years ago.
Also in years past, before the birth of the modern supermarket (commonly attributed to Piggly Wiggly in 1916), the origin of store goods were well known, promoted and discussed.
A trip to Old Sturbridge Village (OSV) in Massachusetts takes you back in time to an original store as it looked in 1838. The Asa Knight Store was “an imposing two-and-a-half-story emporium” where customers would pay for items using credit earned by selling Mr. Knight their own eggs, butter, cheese and homemade crafts and clothes. Mr. Knight would, in turn, sell those items in the cities where he bought the goods to stock his shelves.
(While the Asa Knight store is no longer a real functioning store, it’s probably the closest you’ll get to recreating a visit to Oleson’s Mercantile from Little House on the Prairie, or Ike Godsey’s Store from The Walton’s.)
And while some might credit modern globalization with the abundance and variety of U.S. groceries in recent times, the influence of a global market can just as easily be seen in Asa Knight’s 1838 emporium. OSV teaches visitors that New England stores carried cotton textiles from England, France and India, linens from Central Europe, and silks from Italy and China. They could also purchase “teas, coffees, spices, sugar, raisins, and dyestuff from China, Arabia, Greece, the East and West Indies, and South America.”
Early American newspaper ads, as well as storekeepers themselves, often hyped foreign imported goods, reflecting early American fascination with items from abroad. It was as much about showcasing the romantic allure of overseas goods, which were highly coveted at the time, as it was about making the sale.
Of course we’ve done a complete turnabout in 2024, with items tagged “Made in the USA” being a draw for discriminating consumers buying everything from denim jeans to jewelry.
Indubitably, the choices given American consumers have exploded exponentially since Mr. Knight’s little store opened its doors. The Cato Institute tells us that “Between 1975 and 2022, for example, the number of products in an average U.S. supermarket has increased by more than three-fold, from 8,948 products to a whopping 31,530.”
A discussion with Benjamin Lorr, author of The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarkethighlights changes to the American grocery store that reflect a shift away from Mr. Friedman’s libertarian “pencil” economics toward something more sinister.
During the discussion, Mr. Lorr highlights “concerns about the insatiability of American appetites and how the markets can be a force for good and bad.”
The fact is that in a struggling economy, particularly an economy as bad as the one we’re in now, “price” is our #1 priority when choosing our food. That fact alone “can have deleterious effects on laborers like farmhands or fishermen” because as Mr. Lorr tells us, “[L]abor is the place where the industry can extract “efficiencies.”
For instance, we see truckers working to create twice the output while collecting 40% less in wages, which is why some of them call their jobs “sharecropping on wheels.”
It’s also an unprecedented uphill battle for entrepreneurs who want shelf space in the local supermarket as they compete with much bigger players “or those with access to venture capital.”
Mr. Lorr’s book highlights the problems of “a supply chain that has grown enormous and complex from serving the needs of a supermarket,” and urges people, whenever possible, to buy “local, direct from the farm” instead.
The “miracle of the modern grocery store” which Mr. Kirk talks about still exists at its core, but like so many other inventions of entrepreneurial capitalism, it’s being destroyed by opposing philosophies. In a country whose population is growing against its will — and whose economy is being torn asunder by socialist policies and unchecked globalism — the once unspoiled ideas that birthed the modern grocery store have become sullied and sinister.
Our supermarkets survived the lockdowns, but can they weather the coming storm? Perhaps now more than ever we need to ask God’s blessing on the people who get the food to our tables.
Can America’s Supermarkets Weather the Coming Storm? | The Epoch Times
