Preventing food deserts: Group trying to help rural grocers The Kansan There is a trend of rural and small-town grocery stores in Kansas closing, and a group called the Rural Grocery Initiative has noticed. “Over a 10-year period, from 2008 to 2018, we tracked 54 rural grocery store closures,” said David Procter, co-founder of the Rural Grocery Initiative. One of those was Weaver Grocers in Hesston, which closed its doors in April 2018. The city council of Hesston has had discussions in the past two years of what to do — but to date, no one has stepped forward to fill the void. Grocery shoppers in Hesston now can head to Newton, Buhler, Inman, Moundridge or Goessel.