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Both race and socioeconomic status impact access to affordable healthy food. In recognition of this and in an attempt to remake their image as they expand their market, Walmart is taking initiative to improve their image and one of the ways they are doing this is through changing their food practices. Walmart’s recent moves into urban areas–as a result of having saturated the rural and suburban ones–provide an opportunity to assess their methods and the effects of their entry on urban neighborhoods. While Walmart has made a pledge to buy locally, sell more organic produce and to be sustainable, further examination into their promises demonstrate that Walmart’s business model will not allow for them to be a part of the solution to our broken food system. Despite tactful public relations, Walmart remains one of the problems with our food system.

I analyze Walmart through three lenses: food justice, sustainability and the treadmill of production in order to show that Walmart is perpetuating the treadmill of production–not contributing to food justice or sustainability. I focus on Walmart’s move into the urban sector by exploring its potential new location in East New York. I draw my data regarding Walmart’s impact on other urban U.S. sites in Chicago to gauge the likelihood of whether Walmart will be beneficial to East New York as a low income area with high unemployment. Given the tension between profit and sustainability, the two things that Walmart is attempting to achieve, I anticipate that it will be difficult if not impossible for them to maintain their market share.