Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, NE

Reviving Local Rural Grocery Stores Through Cooperative Ownership

The loss of a grocery store in a rural community impacts access to food, accelerates depopulation and economic decline in communities.  Scattered communities have started or saved local groceries through alternative ownership structures, including cooperatives. There is little information available to communities on how effective such efforts are and how communities can develop a model to be sustainable both as a business structure and a community institution. The Cooperative Foundation’s grant to the Center of Rural Affairs will finance research to analyze and develop models for local and cooperative ownership of local grocery stores in rural communities. Learn more about this research at http://www.cfra.org/renewrural/grocery.