[dwiel]

Fancy seeing another person from Bloomington, IN here!

I applaud Wal-mart for making local food more accessible. There are plenty of places that could use more cheap produce in their towns.

It's understandable that Bloomingfoods (the local organic grocery store) is so expensive since they are paying for the prime retail location space in town compared to Wal-Mart which is out in the county. You are paying for the luxury of walking or biking to their stores - Wal-mart is only accessible by Car or Bus. Trading convenience for price.

For a slightly different trade-off, there are about 40 or 50 people who just started buying in a food buying club once a month directly from the distributor that Bloomingfoods buys from (UNFI). They don't have much in the way of local fresh produce (we get that from the farmer's markets and CSAs), but the canned goods, bulk items and hosehold items are typically between 30-50% cheaper than Bloomingfoods and the pickup is right in town. If you are interested, let me know and I can get you the info.