The government’s online food assistance program doesn’t include independent grocers and ignores the gaps in rural infrastructure.

After 33 years in Okanogan Coun­ty, Wash., there is nowhere else Lael Dun­can would want to be — con­sid­er­ing the Okanogan Riv­er, which churns with salmon in the fall; the rare mix of for­est and high­land desert; and the jagged peaks of the North Cas­cades Moun­tains, often referred to as the Alps of North Amer­i­ca. Approx­i­mate­ly 250 miles north­east of Seat­tle, the sprawl­ing coun­ty is home to slight­ly more than 40,000 res­i­dents — which, as Dun­can notes with a laugh, works out to about 7 or 8 square miles per per­son. The coun­ty also has a 17% pover­ty rate. 

Pover­ty looks and feels dif­fer­ent in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty. Much of rur­al Amer­i­ca has no pub­lic trans­porta­tion and res­i­dents may live miles away from basic ser­vices (such as gas sta­tions and gro­cery stores), and the per­va­sive lack of high-speed inter­net often ren­ders tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions irrelevant.