Farmer’s Markets

‘Farm Country Feeds America. But Just Try Buying Groceries There.’ ∞

November 15, 2019

Jack Healy writing for the NYTimes about food deserts in rural America:

The loss of grocery stores can feel like a cruel joke when you live surrounded by farmland. About 5 million people in rural areas have to travel 10 miles or more to buy groceries, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Dollar-store chains selling cheap food are entering hundreds of small towns, but their shelves are mostly stocked with frozen, refrigerated and packaged foods. Local health officials worry that the flight of fresh foods will only add to rural America’s health problems by exacerbating higher rates of heart disease and obesity.

I knew rural America had food deserts, but I was surprised recently learn they happen in Los Angeles too. I had realized it could happen in densely populated regions in the same way it could to sparsely populated places. Pop-up markets like Süprmarkt were LA’s answer in Leimert Park.

“Communities tell me: We don’t want to use the term co-op,” said Sean Park, a program manager for the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs. He has helped guide rural towns through setting up their own markets. “It’s ironic because it was farmers who pioneered co-ops. They’re O.K. with ‘community store.’ They’re the same thing, but you’ve got to speak the language.”

Yet again, it always comes down to language. People are afraid of certain words.

But the challenges of starting a small grocery store at a time of increasing consolidation in the food business are daunting. The Great Scott! market could not persuade any wholesalers to work with them, so they bought a van and make regular trips to buy basics at a small markup from another supermarket.

“I called all the major chains, and if they didn’t laugh in my face they hung up on me,” said Shaun Tyson, a farmer in Mount Pulaski, a town about an hour from Winchester that is working to start its own co-op market by the spring.

A few states including Alabama, Nevada and Oklahoma have begun to study rural food deserts. They offer tax credits and loans to help stores finance construction projects and move to underserved places. In March, a bipartisan cluster of lawmakers in Washington proposed a new tax credit for grocery stores in food deserts.

But mostly, the people setting up crowd-funding sites to buy vegetable coolers and negotiating wholesale rates with huge grocery chains say they are stumbling around with little assistance and no map.

There is no easy fix here. And I’m sad to say that it’s likely going to get worse for rural parts of America.

‘Small Family Farms Aren’t the Answer’ ∞

August 3, 2019

From Chris Newman, writing about the struggle of being a farmer and a farmer’s market vendor, with emphasis his:

Altogether, then, I’m paying $5,850 to participate in a large farmers market.

It’s pretty safe to assume that the costs of the other 99 vendors are similar. We’re shelling out a combined $585,000 to participate in just one market. Most of us participate in at least two markets, so let’s double the figure to $1.17m, then round down to $1 million just to be conservative.

A $1 million+ annual operating budget could comfortably lease, service, and staff a large urban brick and mortar market that’s open 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, year-round.

Instead, we spend it on a pop-up market that’s open just half the year (in my neck of the woods), for two days a week (remember, two markets), four hours at a time. And it’s probably outdoors — where rain, excessive heat, or a cold snap will effectively ruin your day.

As much as I like farmers markets, the amount of resources that small farmers pour into them is terribly misdirected if we’re serious about mounting a real challenge to the conventional food system.

Speaking on the idea of independence and farming he continues:

Our freedom also costs us results in the marketplace. The zeal for “saving the world” is undercut by annual sales at farmers markets estimated at less than $2 billion in the U.S., with the growth of markets slowing even as hundreds of billions of dollars of food is sold annually in grocery stores. As the link above states, part of this slowdown may be the result of an explosion in local food hubs, which are themselves riddled with competitive issues of their own, in addition to (generally) being non-farmer owned and little more than middlemen that force farmers to take prices.

Because of our insistence on independence and our failure to cooperate more closely, we’re being outsold at the grocery store by a factor of 400+. 

He concludes:

[Farmers] markets will still be one of the best ways to connect to the actual people growing your food and gain an understanding of what it takes to responsibly feed a hungry planet.

I’m always interested in what the word responsibly can mean when it comes to food.

✏️ by C. W. Moss