The irony isn't lost on anyone: Tipton County is known for agriculture and home to several food processing plants, and yet, some residents feel the county is facing an issue with food access.
Nathan Kring is the director of the Tipton County Economic Development Organization. During a tour of Tipton, he took me to White's Meat Market.
"I mean, if you're looking for fresh produce, or fresh meat, or dairy besides a convenience store. This is about your only option," Kring says. "This is it besides Marsh."
And the Marsh was purchased last week by an Ohio based grocery chain, Fresh Encounters, Inc.
Fresh Encounters says it doesn't intend to close any of the stores it purchased from Marsh, including the Tipton location, even during the transition.
This comes as a relief to Tiptonresidents; if Marsh closed, residents would have to drive about 25 minutes to the next county to reach the nearest comparable grocery store.
But all of the what-ifs and the uncertainty about Marsh highlighted a problem in Tipton County: food isn't easily accessible for everyone.
"8,000 people live inside Cicero Township, which is the center township," Kring says. "But even people who are two, three, five miles from Marsh, we're finding out don't have a car or only have one vehicle for the entire family."
The current Marsh store is about a mile east of Tipton's courthouse. Kring points out that there aren't sidewalks or bike trails to get there, and he says walking on highways can be a little dangerous.
Kring says that White's Meat Market and Dollar General do very well. And he says a lot of money is spent at convenience stores.
He says out of 6,600 households in Tipton County, a little more than 3,300 people went to a convenience store and spent $100 or more on at least four occasions each month last year.
"If you can get to a grocery store, you can buy a lot of groceries for $100 that would get you through many more meals than $100 at a convenience store is going to provide," says Cynthia Stone, a professor at Indiana University's Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health.
Stone studies the impact of grocery availability on public health. She says it's possible to eat healthily at a convenience store, but it takes work.
She says people aren't getting a lot of healthy choices throughout the day if they're purchasing all of their food from the convenience store. And she adds nutrition is important because it's tied to cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and higher stroke rates.
In Tipton, Kring is concerned folks aren't getting the nutrition they need from the convenience stores.
"Our unemployment rate is 3.3 percent. Very low, but what I think is Tipton is underemployed," Kring says. "Mom and Dad are making $8 to $9 an hour and they're just not able to live on a shoe string budget."
But Stone says in her research, it's a variety of factors that can lead to health issues.
As for a solution?
"A lot of public health is trying to make the healthy choice, good food, the easy choice," she says.
