Farmers’ Markets are suddenly the place to be seen in this college town. The University itself sponsors one, and so I visited. I don’t know why I was expecting the workers and peasants to be there buying up local produce from bearded guys in overalls. Instead it was the same crowd I see at the local art museum’s special exhibits. The shoppers were professors and their spouses, well-to-do students who just had to have the freshest stuff, and others along these lines. The sellers were a pretty savvy bunch too, knowing just how to tug on the heart strings of the demographic that used to be called the “limousine liberals.”
The prices reflected the clientele. My goodness, in general they were twice what the local grocery store charges. This was a shock to me. I could get the same stuff at half the price just a mile away but then there would be no opportunity to see and be seen in the same way. Oh, and there’s also the supposed inherent virtue of buying from a local farmer as versus supporting the corporate elite and their alleged frankenfood from the corporate grocery store.
But even this was complicated by the fact that some of the vendors here had driven many hours to get here. What is local and what is not is a point in dispute. For example, the man with super-cool rabbit meat, lamb and goat sausage, and the like, had come 3.5 hours, and he does this every week, even though he doesn’t have a refrigerated truck. He has to carefully packed all his meat in iced containers and pull them out periodically throughout the day so that they won’t melt. Still, this was great stuff he was selling – even if $14 for a sausage is quite the luxury.
Now, this is puzzling to me. We’ve had 100 years have heavy-duty regulations on meat packing in this country. Every corporate giant faces a labyrinth of inspections and mandates comparable to the Soviet Gosplan, just to get meat to the market. And yet here is a guy with some animals on his land who slaughters, grinds, packs, and sells, and no one seems to be bothering him. No inspectors, no special tests, no mandates. Puzzling. Thrilling but puzzling.
Are there special regulations on farmers’ markets? I’ve looked it up and, yes, there are associations and rules and things that govern these institutions, and they do seem to be different and obviously lighter than anything the grocery suppliers have to obey. But what is and is not a farmers’ market seems a bit vague to me, with laws differing from place to place. In the scheme of things, there is certainly a sense in which the people selling here have huge regulatory advantages over the corporate groceries.
But this isn’t the only kind of farmers’ market around. In the neighboring town, I visited one that really is kept alive by the workers and peasants. The price were 1/3 to 1/2 as much as the local grocery. They have locally grown produce, and a fantastic cart full of virtually free produce that is about to spoil. WalMart, meanwhile, is required by law to throw its mushy stuff out and not even sell it.
So yes, there does seem to be some sort of different regulatory standard that governs these, though I can’t seem to figure out what it is and perhaps a reader can explain. I asked the only person I could, which is the person who checked me out. “You are asking the wrong person,” she said; “I just work here.”
Fair enough. I also noted that not everything here was in fact grown locally. My best prize of the day: catfish from Vietnam for $4 per pound. Whoo hoo! What a deal. And all the way from Vietnam to the local farmers’ market! But reading the local newspaper today, I was rather disappointed to discover a sale at the local corporate giant: same thing for $3 per pound.
My conclusion here: the world is not as simple as films like Food, Inc. — which demonizes every product in the grocery store as secretly poisonous and fake, rolled out by fatcats who care nothing for your health – make it out to be. There is not inherent virtue or vice associated with shopping here or there. Every business depends on the volition of the consumer, and our willingness to buy suggests that we get more than we give up, and that is all there is to it.
