What is your farmers market for?

I just stumbled on this March/April 2009 Mother Jones article discussing the evolution of farmers markets in North America. It explains how many farmers markets bring more diversity into the range of products that are being sold in order to generate more revenue. Street performers, baked goods and restaurants are now commonly seen alongside honey and cheese producers. (My local farmers markets has acoustic bands come to play every week.)

And now Saturday mornings are really jamming, crowds are gathering for the coffee and the banjo player, and some of your core vendors guess accurately that a lot of these folks are more interested in scented candles than in cauliflower. So they gradually switch their product mix, and that, in turn, encourages still more scented-candle buyers.

Market managers end up allowing non-local and non-organic food to be sold so that buyers can be sure that they find all the products they need.

“These markets are a fucking hayride—they aren’t real,” says a prominent Northern California organic farmer who prefers not to be identified. “They don’t offer a real market opportunity for real farmers, but the public would rather be deceived because it’s too complicated.”

A farmers market in Des Moines, IA. Flickr user WindRanch, held under a Creative Commons non-commercial/attribution/no-derivative license.

I think there needs to be a debate over what we want from our farmers markets and how it’s really suppose to benefit us. Their main goal is to provide us with healthy, local produce, but we all know that in the end it’s all about building a community. Going to your local market is a weekly opportunity to have a chat with your neighbours, meet the farmers who produce the food you eat, and get the latest updates on what’s going on in the community. Going to the market is more than just going grocery shopping, it’s a social experience and a celebration. We bring in street performers and restaurants and scented candles because we want this experience to be as fulfilling as possible.

Going to your weekly farmers market is just like going to church. Both have a primary, functional role and a secondary, social role. Incidentally, my farmers markets takes place every Sunday morning. So I would argue that we should keep the street performers in while holding the market manager more accountable and being less picky about the types of products we want to be able to buy there. If there’s no local asparagus producer, then don’t bring in the giant industrial one.