It started with cars. Once people got cars, they started getting their groceries at big one-stop-shops at the edge of town. The edge of town supermarkets were more convenient than local shops. And they were cheaper, because they used their size to extract better deals from suppliers. The local greengrocers, butchers and bakers couldn’t compete with them on price. Then the supermarkets got really big. Local supermarkets got squeezed out by regional supermarket chains, which got pushed out by national chains, and then international ones. Now, a handful of international chains control almost all grocery shopping in Europe and North…

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