James McWilliams is a historian at Texas State University and author of the new book “Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly”. (Yes, that is a hackle-raising subtitle, especially if you are a devout locavore, which some of us are not.) McWilliams has turned up on this blog before, both concerning locavorism and his purchase of a homeless man’s cardboard sign. This is his first of a series of guest posts on farmers’ markets.
Do Farmers’ Markets Really Strengthen Local Communities?
Part One
by James McWilliams
A Guest Post
For several years now I’ve been arguing that buying locally produced food doesn’t necessarily lower one’s carbon footprint. “Are we about to witness fistfights over the price of baby arugula?”
For some reason, though, this response falls flat. Sure, on an intuitive level, the claim makes perfect sense. Milling around the farmers’ market with like-minded foodies, buying fresh produce grown on nearby small farms, listening to local musicians play local songs, and supporting a variety of homegrown artisans certainly qualifies as an enriching community experience. But can we say with any assurance beyond anecdotal evidence that the thousands of farmers’ markets established over the last twenty years have brought together communities across the United States? If so, how? And for whom?
Markets encompass a wide range of experiences. For me, primarily because I don’t view the farmers’ market as a venue to nurture community bonds, my transactions tend to be as personal or impersonal as if I were shopping at a generic grocery store. Don’t get me wrong — I respect my local farmers very much. Still, I approach their stalls not to get to know them, but to buy the excellent food they sell.
Many of my more extroverted friends wouldn’t care if their farmer-friend was hawking shriveled turnips dusted in cow dung. They’re there to have a social experience. Their aim is to personalize shopping in a way unachievable at Wal-Mart. In this sense, I suppose, a farmers’ market can foster community ties in the ways conventional grocery stores cannot.
But even so, something is missing. Most notably, I don’t see how community cohesion necessarily follows the fact that one can, if one wants, interact with the person who grew your food. Historically, such personalized economic transactions were the norm, but they were inherently fraught with risk and tension. In colonial America — a place I’ve studied in some depth — all markets were initially driven by face-to-face interaction. It should come as no surprise that things could get, well, personal. Markets were intensely competitive and exclusive. Everyone knew everyone. And that was often the problem. The court records of colonial New England are replete with personal market transactions gone awry.
When merchant-led expansion fostered systematic trade with distant markets, the nature of local trade changed. Mediators entered the scene. The supply chain lengthened. The personal nature of exchange yielded to standardized norms required by middle men who had only a tenuous connection to the products for sale. Impersonal mediators and distant institutions (such as banks and insurance companies) ultimately diffused face-to-face interactions by placing a buffer between buyers and sellers. Markets became larger and less personal. Neighbors became customers. Legal battles continued apace, but they were not personal. Just business.
Today, as we return to local markets (farmers’ markets have grown from 400 in 1970 to over 4,000 today), who is to say that the novelty of personal exchange will not gradually fade? Who is to say that the mystique of the local farmer will not diminish and that we’ll eventually come to realize that what we’re engaging in at the farmers’ market is, no matter what the perceived social benefits, ultimately an economic experience? Are we about to witness fistfights over the price of baby arugula? Probably not. But if we did, there’d be a historical precedent for it.
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First and importantly, you’re not “wrong”. These are the sorts of observations historians and academics are good at, and there’s nothing in your view that you can’t support with credible reference material. Makes great quotables for the Friday afternoon cocktail (or organica gardening) party circuit.
After that, it’s shallowness is breathtaking.
You don’t seem particularly engaged in strengthening community bonds, so the farmers market by itself isn’t going to help. If you are only interested in the exchange of commodities for goods, that’s where it stops. OK.
For those that have an interest in strengthening community bonds, that means getting to know your neighbor. This is fraught with peril and anxiety for most academics; they might actually have to confront realities contrary to their preconceived notions of society and how it works. Personalities and undisciplined impulses explode all over the place in vibrant communities. Get used to it.
For those of us that want to know what it means to be a farmer in 20th century America, and what it actually means to derive one’s income from such activity, the farmers market is a classroom, laboratory, and test case all wrapped up into one. You might want to think about that for a few moments.
There is no good economic argument for farmers markets, and personally, I don’t really care about all that carbon footprint stuff, but that’s another story that requires a lot of reference material to support, so I digress………
One goes to the farmers market to buy food, meet neighbors, reduce driving in an urban environment, slow down, maybe discuss the ins and outs of kale versus collards, and generally educate oneself to how the world works outside of institutional environments wherein attitudes and actions are proscibed within tight boundaries of administrative and rewards are earned by leapfrogging out past some past observation to another, supported by credible references.
IOW, enter the real world, Oh Teacher…….learn something. Until then, you’ve consigned yourself to just another position inventing detached academic viewpoints on something quite simple and wonderful.
Another potential benefit of the local farmers market (depending on its overall focus) is that it reduces barriers to entry for local entrepreneurs. What if Mom wants to start selling that wonderful and unique pie she loves to make? Where else can she find such a place where shoppers readily exist and yet she can start out as small as needed?
Any time my tomato was ripened on the vine, 50 miles outside of Chicago (where I live) instead of on the back of a 18-wheeler on its way to Chicago from Argentina– I’m happy.
This argument is perverse and pernicious in the extreme. You have trivialized a holistic exchange into boutique economics. And you have willfully misrepresented both the consumer and the provider. The personal exchange matters because it ensures fair trade. Look for the “shriveled turnips dusted in cow dung”–or the equivalent–from the agri-industrial model. Not at the local farmer’s market.
Fresh produce tastes better and the prices are often the same as or lower than the grocery store.
I’ve never had a bad experience or felt ripped off at the farmers market and said to myself, I wish there was a level of bureaucracy in place that would protect me from price fluctuations while degrading quality.
To the extent that I experience a community feeling at the market, it’s as much about neighbors as about interacting with farmers. I find myself trying to imagine, as they buy golden beets or early girl tomatoes, the dinners they’ll make that evening for family or friends. Yes, the claims are overblown, and not always rational. It’s more “how ya’ doing” than holding hands in a circle. Still, there’s something about knowing where your food comes from that relieves one’s modern alienation from farm and field. Even if you have no interest in going back.
Let me try out an idea that I haven’t thought totally through . With the standardization of the supply chain, only standard things get through the supply chain. One benefit to farmers markets is that it brings some non-standard things to the table, creating pressure for more diversity in the supply chain. Take heirloom tomatoes. A few years ago, you would never see any unusual tomatoes at your typical grocery store. Tomatoes bread for shelf-stability and shipping durability. With the proliferation of farmers markets, people began to see that you can actually buy tasty tomatoes. Now, it is common to see heirloom tomatoes at the local Safeway. I think similar things have happened with diversity of greens, Japanese eggplant, quality peaches when in season here in Colorado, tasty in-season corn (best when very fresh), fresh eggs and chicken that taste better than the standard factory farm raised), and the demand for fresh herbs just to name a few things off the top of my head.
I believe one benefit to Farmers markets is to create a laboratory for diversity that the standard supply chain doesn’t necessarily create.
Bravo bravo Artemis. Farming is and always has been a uniquely satisfying occupation for those who are cut out for it, many of whom have grown up with it and can imagine doing nothing else with their lives, and the farmer’s market does, indeed, help the small or family farmer have a fighting chance against agribusiness and corporate predation. As for McWilliams, I suggest you take an extended vacation from New York City and the paranoia it breeds and refocus on human relationships. Perhaps you’re incapable of interacting with a farmer without making him feel, shall we say, uncomfortable in your presence. In that case, I don’t blame you for imagining that on some homocidal impulse he might poison your okra.