Rural Food Insecurity Rose From 12% to 16%—and a 1936 Law Could Fix It

Rural food insecurity climbed from 12% in 2019 to nearly 16% in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Michelle Miller, an applied economic anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argues the fix already exists in federal law. The problem is enforcement.

Low income plays a part. Logistics play another. Delivering groceries to rural areas costs distributors more, which raises prices and cuts access. Perishable goods—produce, meat, dairy—travel in refrigerated trucks and rank among the most expensive products to distribute, per a USDA analysis. Rural routes add further cost. Small stores order less and rarely fill a truck alone, so distributors run long multi-stop routes or send trucks back partly empty.

What did regulation once guarantee?

In 1935, the Motor Carrier Act required licensed trucking companies to serve specific regions. Carriers served rural and urban routes alike, offsetting unprofitable rural service with high margins on city-to-city lanes. In exchange for regional licenses, companies integrated rural communities into supply chains on publicly financed roads.

The following year, the Robinson-Patman Act prohibited wholesale suppliers from favoring large grocers with better prices, advertising or exclusive deals. Together, the two laws held national distribution in check. A small-town grocer in 1950 had access to much the same products as a city grocer in the same region.

How did deregulation change the map?

Enforcement of Robinson-Patman waned in the 1970s as Chicago School economists pushed deregulation. Grocery companies accelerated consolidation and accumulated massive buying power. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed a new Motor Carrier Act that removed the requirement to serve specific regions. Carriers chose their routes, prioritized profitable urban lanes, and rural service declined.

Chains gained wholesale discounts that independents lacked. In the 1990s, chain stores added point-of-sale data—checkout and loyalty records—and early forms of artificial intelligence to find purchasing patterns across whole regions. Local businesses had no such tools. Sophisticated logistics technology now optimizes trucking for high-density, high-margin urban corridors, pushing independent grocers further to the margins.

Where are the gaps?

Miller and her colleagues used USDA and Department of Transportation databases plus AI models to map rural access. National distributors are underserving seven states—West Virginia, Arizona, Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana—in refrigerated meat, dairy and prepared foods.

In Wisconsin, the team traced produce using proprietary data from Transearch, a freight-tracking tool. Most Wisconsin counties received less than 9.2 pounds of leafy greens per person annually from national distributors—a third of the 30 to 35 pounds a typical American eats per year. Urban counties around Milwaukee and Madison received 19 to 37 pounds per person.

Interviews across 13 northern Wisconsin counties explained why. Federal safety rules cap truckers at 11 hours behind the wheel, so distant deliveries fit a shift only with one stop. "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."

Independent retailers operate more than half of rural grocery stores and provide 38% of food sales, per USDA-linked research. Some grocers formed distribution co-ops they own and govern. Co-ops alone won't fix the problem: one grocer told the research team that two cooperative distributors merged, sold to private equity, and were then bought by Kroger, which stopped supplying independent stores and focused on more profitable urban locations. That reduced competition in rural food distribution.

Is enforcement coming back?

During the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission revived enforcement of the long-dormant Robinson-Patman Act. It sued to block the merger between Kroger and Albertsons, sued distributor Southern Glazer's over alleged deep discounts to national chains including Kroger, and sued PepsiCo over alleged deals given to one large retailer but not smaller ones.

In May 2025, under the Trump administration, the FTC dropped the PepsiCo case, citing partisanship. In October 2026, it settled with Southern Glazer's in a deal the agency said would make it easier for small businesses to compete with large chains.

Miller argues that enforcing Robinson-Patman would discourage discriminatory pricing against smaller rural stores, and that reinstating rural delivery as a licensing requirement under a Motor Carrier-style framework could level the field.

What happens next?

In 2025, the Trump administration stopped collecting food security data, leaving researchers unable to tell whether rural conditions improved or worsened in 2026. In June 2026, Canada announced a 10-year, 3.2 billion Canadian dollar food security strategy, including aid to independent grocers, refrigerated warehouses and open wholesale marketplaces. Large regions of the U.S., Miller concludes, would benefit from the same.