In longtime Farmer City resident Laura Enger's estimation, it's been about eight years since her DeWitt County town [pop. 1,828] was home to a proper grocery store — one with offerings beyond the highly processed convenience foods often found in gas stations or dollar stores.
A new effort is inching closer toward changing that reality: Members of the forthcoming Farm to City Harvest Store's steering committee have purchased a downtown building they hope to transform into a cooperative grocery store that features locally sourced produce, meats, a deli counter and more.
"Ever since we got the building, things have been snowballing in a good way," Enger, who has championed the idea from the beginning, said in a recent interview. "We're going to be doing a major renovation project starting, I think, this winter."
The grocery-store-in-the-making officially debuted on Nov. 19, the day of Farmer City's annual Christmas parade. The building reveal at 111 S. Main St. marked a significant milestone in the steering committee's progress, Enger said, and possibly for the community at large.
"Other businesses downtown could tell — people were decorating their storefronts and
everybody was like, 'Where's the grocery store?' Our booth in front of the store was very successful. It's kind of like this whole culture might be changing," Enger said.
A feasibility study completed by the steering committee showed a "significant amount of dollars" are spent within the 20 miles outside of Farmer City, Enger said, since people leave town to do their grocery shopping.
"We rely on stores that are outside of our immediate radius, so we have to drive at least 15 miles away to get to a store — and those are the smaller stores. Otherwise, we're located very centrally between Bloomington, Champaign, Decatur and those are all at least a half an hour drive," she said. "All of your money is spent outside of here, which isn't good for all those reasons why people want to live here."
For years, the trend went like this: Small, rural towns lost population numbers — and their grocery stores went away, too. Some 3 million people in Illinois live in a food desert, according to the most recent [2021] data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, meaning their access to nutritious, fresh food is limited.
Some communities have tried bucking the trend by opening their own cooperative groceries, which is what Enger hopes to see happen in Farmer City. In Cairo, Illinois' southernmost city, locals celebrated the opening of a new co-op called Rise Market in June.
"Obviously, privately-owned grocery ownership didn't work in the past, so we needed to figure out a way that we could band the community together to keep it sustainable," Enger said. "If you have ownership from the beginning, then it's more likely that your small town is going to keep supporting it in the future."
There's not yet a firm open date for the Farm to City Harvest Store. Enger said that while things are picking up steam since the building purchase, there are still many details to sort out. The circa-1938 building that was once a law office needs significant renovation before it can house a grocery store and commercial kitchen.
There's also the matter of fundraising and sourcing grants.
Enger said the group is currently awaiting construction bids and finalizing other details before it begins to ask for a target fundraising amount. She said she knows Rise Market needed more than $700,000, but hopes that because the Farmer City group is working in a smaller building [2,300 sq. feet], it won't need nearly as much.
Earlier this year Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation establishing the Illinois Grocery Initiative, putting $20 million in state money toward supporting grocers in food deserts.
The Farm to City Harvest Store steering committee is working along the Value-Added Sustainable Development Center, a specific department in Western Illinois University's Institute for Rural Affairs.
"I want people to know that they can help. They can be a volunteer or a vendor ...Right now, we really need people who are construction-minded — that would be great," Enger said. "And then also just spreading the word around because we want to keep seeing all these hits on the website... to help our community look forward to the next thing."
