Researcher says deregulation widened rural America's fresh food gap

National distributors underserve seven states on refrigerated foods

In a commentary published Oct. 29 by United Press International and republished from The Conversation, applied economic anthropologist Michelle Miller of the University of Wisconsin-Madison argues that many national supply chains don’t prioritize rural communities, and that deregulation, supply chain privatization and consolidation in food distribution since the 1970s have widened rural America’s fresh food gap. She argues that reviving the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act could help close it. UPI notes that the views and opinions expressed in the commentary are solely those of the author.

The analysis cites U.S. Department of Agriculture data showing food insecurity among rural households rising from 12% in 2019 to nearly 16% in 2024. Miller, who works on food systems, writes that low income plays a part, but that supply chain logistics also drive the gap: perishable foods travel in refrigerated trucks, making them among the most expensive products to distribute, and rural routes add further costs because small stores order less and rarely fill a truck on their own, so distributors either run long, multi-stop routes or send trucks out and back partly empty. Either way, delivery costs increase. Delivering groceries to rural areas costs distributors more, Miller wrote, leading to higher prices and less access for rural consumers.

Miller traces the widening gap to mid-century regulation and its later dismantling. The 1935 Motor Carrier Act required licensed trucking companies to serve specific regions, so carriers served rural and urban routes alike, ensuring that publicly financed roads were serving public needs, and offset unprofitable rural service with the high margins they made on profitable city-to-city routes, integrating rural communities into their supply chains. The following year, the Robinson-Patman Act prohibited wholesale suppliers from favoring large grocers with better prices, advertising or other exclusive deals, discouraging retailers from getting bigger to get better deals. “Together, the two laws strengthened regional economies and held national distribution in check,” Miller wrote, describing a small-town grocer in 1950 as having access to much the same products as a city grocer in the same region.

Enforcement of Robinson-Patman waned in the 1970s as the growing influence of Chicago School economists drove a shift toward deregulation, and grocery companies accelerated consolidation by accumulating massive buying power. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed a new Motor Carrier Act that removed the requirement that trucking companies serve specific regions. Once carriers could choose their routes, service to rural regions declined as companies prioritized more profitable urban routes. Over time, Miller wrote, the dismantling and neglect of these regulatory fail-safes jacked up rural food distribution costs and allowed big grocers to get even bigger, with chains gaining access to wholesale discounts that independents didn’t have, affecting smaller grocers and generations of rural Americans.

These policy shifts were amplified in the 1990s, Miller wrote, as chain stores began using point-of-sale data such as checkout and loyalty-program records, and early forms of artificial intelligence used to find patterns in big datasets gave larger companies a further competitive advantage over local businesses. As AI-powered data became more sophisticated, businesses with the means adopted new technology to improve trucking logistics that optimize for high-density, high-margin urban corridors. This has pushed independent grocers further to the margins.

Miller and her colleagues used USDA and Department of Transportation databases and AI models to map rural food access. They found that national distributors are underserving seven states — West Virginia, Arizona, Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana — when it comes to refrigerated meat, dairy and other prepared foods. Tracing produce in particular with proprietary data from Transearch, a tool transportation planners use to track interstate commerce, they found that in most Wisconsin counties national distributors delivered less than 9.2 pounds (4.2 kilograms) of leafy greens per person annually — less than a third of the 30 to 35 pounds (14 to 16 kilograms) a typical American eats in a year — while urban counties around Milwaukee and Madison received 19 to 37 pounds (9 to 17 kilograms) per person annually.

Interviews with grocers, distributors and food pantry volunteers across 13 northern Wisconsin counties helped illustrate why, Miller wrote. Federal safety rules cap truckers at 11 hours behind the wheel, so a distant delivery might fit in a shift only if the truck has one stop to make. “But to be profitable, we need multiple stops on the truck,” one distributor said. “That’s why a lot of those really far-out stores, we’re not really interested in.”

Working to fill this gap, independent retailers operate more than half of rural grocery stores, providing 38% of food sales, Miller wrote. To alleviate the supply chain cost burden, some rural grocers have joined or formed distribution co-ops they own and govern. But Miller wrote that co-ops alone won’t fix the underlying problem. One grocer told her team that two cooperative distributors that had served smaller, independent grocers merged and were bought out by a private equity firm; eventually Kroger, one of the country’s largest integrated grocery chains, bought the distribution network and stopped supplying independent stores, serving only those it owned. It also focused on more profitable urban locations, opening new stores in high-growth markets. The purchase reduced competition in rural food distribution, Miller wrote.

The commentary also details recent antitrust enforcement. During the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission revived enforcement of the long-dormant 1936 Robinson-Patman Act and other antitrust laws meant to protect independent businesses from a few big companies controlling the market, and it sued to block a merger between Kroger and Albertsons, two of the country’s largest grocery chains. The FTC also sued distributor Southern Glazer’s for allegedly giving deep discounts to national chain stores, including Kroger, and PepsiCo for allegedly giving a large retailer deals that smaller ones didn’t get. In May 2025, under the Trump administration, the FTC dropped the PepsiCo case, citing partisanship. In October 2026, it settled its case against Southern Glazer’s in a deal the agency said would make it easier for small businesses to compete with large chains.

In her assessment, Miller wrote, enforcing Robinson-Patman and other laws would discourage discriminatory pricing that gives chains an advantage over smaller rural stores. She also wrote that taking a fresh look at food distribution policies — like the Motor Carrier Act and public utility policies — could help “level the playing field,” and that including rural delivery as a licensing requirement again could improve rural food access.

Miller also flagged a widening data gap. In 2025, the Trump administration announced it would no longer collect food security data, she wrote, without which food systems researchers will struggle to know whether conditions in rural America improved or worsened in 2026, while public funding to monitor food systems continues its decline. She pointed to Canada, which in June 2026 announced a 10-year food security strategy worth 3.2 billion Canadian dollars, including aid to independent grocers, refrigerated warehouses and open wholesale marketplaces where farmers can sell their produce. Miller wrote that large regions of the U.S. would benefit from the same.