The interior of Market on the Hill in Mt. Pulaski, Illinois, on Jan. 25, 2022. The market opened up after the last grocery store in the town closed down. photo by Darrell Hoemann, Investigate Midwest

For years, rural areas have dealt with declining food options — fewer restaurants and grocery stores. One option that has popped in recent decades is the dollar store. 

When dollar stores enter a marketplace, whether rural or urban, grocery stores are affected negatively, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers who used proprietary data.

The number of stores, the number of employees and the amount of sales all decreased after dollar stores opened nearby, according to the analysis, which used data from 2000 to 2019.

Rural areas were most affected. For instance, rural grocery stores were almost three times as likely to close than those in urban areas, according to the analysis.

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Sky Chadde has covered the agriculture industry for Investigate Midwest since 2019 and spent much of 2020 focused on the crisis of COVID-19 in meatpacking plants, which included collecting and analyzing...

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