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Really? Sounds like a terrible farmer’s market, I’ve usually found much fresher food generally below grocery store prices, rarely higher. With the exception of chicken and eggs, but there’s reasons for that
I’ve never been to a farmers market that didn’t have an outrageous mark up. Street markets in developing nations are certainly often cheaper. But anything claiming to be a “farmer’s market” - no.
My experience has been, I go to a random parking lot somewhere on Saturday morning, there’s like 15 stands selling huge fresh produce with prices like 4 for $1, and then there’s a guy with pigs selling entire fractions of animals for what I assume was a good price
I’ve heard of ones that sound more like county fairs with admission prices and massage booths and such… It kinda seems like at that point they’ve lost the plot
Maybe your farmers markets aren’t just simple direct sales. Do they have to pay real money to set up their stalls? Or worse, is there a bidding process?
Maybe someone is siphoning money there
Yeah, the actual street/wet/flea markets are the ones that are cheaper than grocery stores and real farmer’s markets operate like them. The problem is “Farmer’s markets” have been commercialized in a lot of places that they’re basically a rich people thing where you can buy “fresh” produce that isn’t in the grocery store that commoners use.
It really seems to.depend on your area and what the products are. The veggies at my local farmers market are super reasonable, while the meat is quite pricey. Of course, the meat is being raised in much more sustainable fashion vs large scale meat packing operations, so it genuinely costs more to produce
In my part of the US, if you go to the cheapest grocery store with the cheapest produce, then you will get better prices than the farmer’s market. But it’s very sad depressing produce. Mealy, grainy apples, banged up squash, etc.
If you go to a standard middle of the road supermarket you’ll get meh produce for slightly less than the farmer’s market. If you go to Costco you’ll get a shitton of meh to decent produce for what you would have spent on a normal amount of food at the regular grocery.
High end grocers have similar prices and quality as the farmer’s markets. The fancy grocers have out of season imported stuff at a high price.
Some Asian grocers have really good deals on really fresh produce, but they don’t have much organic stuff.
The farmer’s markets have really amazing selection and variety within the scope of what is local and in season. There’s a dude with over a dozen varieties of potatoes. There’s a mushroom seller with like 4-5 different kinds of oyster mushrooms. There’s a stand that just sells foraged stuff that you almost never see in grocery stores. The meat and fish are much more expensive but small producers can’t possibly compete with factory farms on that stuff.
I live in an agricultural area and food from farmers markets is usually cheaper than at the store. But we have tons of farmers markets around here so maybe thats a factor.
Buy your garbage veggies from Mal-Wart then and don’t support your local CSA or local economy and don’t complain when all you have left is a Mal-Wart job in a Mal-Wart economy town
my local farmers use immigrant workers on starvation wages to harvest their crops. is that what you mean by supporting the local economy?
I live in farm country, and pay for farm labor is usually very fair. It’s seasonal work in remote locations, but the pay isn’t bad at all. Also most the migrant farm laborers only stay for the season, that is if it isn’t too hostile for them to try working the season in the first place.
Strange, what mysterious land is this where farm laborers are paid fairly. I have traveled to every continent and 40+ countries visiting thousands of farms. Never have I found a place where farm laborers were paid fairly. They are always the abused serfs of the society working long hours for little pay.
I have seen human suffering in vast quantities but never a fair wage.
Yes capitalism is a harsh load of ass everywhere, but the farm jobs I’VE WORKED, aren’t lower pay than other jobs available in capitalism. They tend to be better than average, and farms tend to raise the offer year to year as they are straining for more labor.
Your personal experience where you live is not how it is everywhere and is not everyones experience.
Then the same logic should be applied to the personal experience conveyed above that one
The point of the original reply was to point out that farmers markets and their pricing aren’t always the ethical choice, and its dependent on where you live. You’re saying “no, it always is, because I live in a farm community and it is here.”
You’re saying “no, it always is, because I live in a farm community and it is here.”
Uhhh…can you point to where I said that?
The other person started with “my local” you started with stating you live in farm country and most do this. Implying you are correcting the other person to state what is the norm when it’s not. There are even documentaries about the slave labor of immigrants and their children.
You didn’t directly say it, but your words are implying this is what is normally is.
I meant the guy i replied to originally.
Two local people shared different local experiences and I’m not sure why you think either is more valid than the other.
Because one guy is pointing out that farmers markets arent ethical everywhere and the other guy is trying to invalidate that.
This was exactly my point. Thank you
Indeed. But ‘starvation’ wages aren’t typical in migrant farm work.
How dare people go to a grocery store.
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don’t complain when all you have left
A most farmers market sellers are also selling to mainline grocery stores and restaurants. You have to be incredibly small time to exclusively sell at market stalls every week or two.
Farmers markets are the perfect place to offload produce that is:
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Too perishable to ship very far
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Too “ugly” to sell to a distributor or store
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Brand new to the market and/or limited run (experiments/new hybrid products etc.)
That last one especially is where farmers markets shine. Producers can connect directly with customers and get immediate feedback. Customers tend to be more interested/knowledgeable in the food/ag scene. They’re a great opportunity for producers to do some hands-on “market research” and test new stuff. The local stores that are “with it” and actually care about such things will also send their reps there to connect directly with producers and scout out the next new hotness in produce.
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About 50% of the human race is middlemen and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated.
“Loss leader” is your clue.
I’ll leave the rest to you to work out.
Economy of scale is a real thing.
Funfact about germany:
the gov gives money to supermarkets when they buy organic products as an incentive to stock up on less conventional products.
not to the people producing it. to the supermarket.
against which we then have to compete
You make it sound like there are not also multiple subsidies programs directly for organic farmers.
In fact, the German government operates a dedicated website offering information for farmers who want to do exactly that:
https://www.bundesprogramm.de/foerderung
Additionally, federal options exist:
This is dumb and the amount of people upvoting is a perfect demonstration of why we got a second Trump administration.
The produce at the farmer’s markets in my city costs more than the produce at the grocery store. I still buy it because it comes from farms who don’t use pesticides and it tastes better, but the main point this post is making is often correct.
Your take on the upvotes causing fascism is wild.
Yeah! Funny stuff is dumb!
Listen, maybe I’m jaded, but this just feels like one more lame-ass attempt to cram more propaganda about the “efficiency of big business” down our throats.
Small markets are notorious for gouging the fuck out of the sellers. Want a booth at a farmers market or a makers market? Well you should expect to spend between $50-200 for the luxury to sell your own goods.
Don’t forget that most of these aren’t audited and you’ll be selling handmade goods next to someone else who is selling garbage from alibaba. Or you’ll be selling homegrown produce next to someone selling boxes of produce he bought from someone else.
Most of these markets are simply not profitable to farmers or makers. The buyers are few and they end up buying the cheaper shit after balking at the prices of anything made with care.
FUD
I’d rather pay higher prices to my local farmer that gives me quality food than a faceless corporation that gives me shitty products that travelled 10,000 kilometers and paid every single worker along that route as little as possible.
It’s ok to dislike corporations but how are the veggies “shitty?”
Industrial fertilizer is an unholy abomination
Not as fresh? Maybe grown out of season in a different climate and also (in the case of cauliflower) usually growing black spots before it comes out of the bag.
My local grocery has been real bad about green beans as of late.
This is gonna sound kinda bougie of me but local stuff even just tastes better than mass-produced stuff. I started getting a weekly farm box from one down the road, and my god, I have never tasted a carrot so carroty in my entire life.
The commercial seed GMO game is plants that won’t make viable seeds so farmers need to keep buying from suppliers. And then the plants are chosen and bred for transportation and appearances, not flavor or nutrition.
The local farms and heirloom varieties are legitimately better.
The commercial seed GMO game is plants that won’t make viable seeds so farmers need to keep buying from suppliers.
And the ones that do yield viable seed will get you sued for violating your limited license to use their patented plants if you plant them.
Scaled markets prefer patented hybrid seeds (yes, that’s real) that have high shelf life, resistance to bruising, and a uniform shape that makes them easy to pack. And high-yield of course. The flavour isn’t really relevant to the corporate farming system, certainly not as much as crop yield and longevity for shipping them is. And of course these patented hybrids are all sterile so farmers have to buy more seeds each year.
Go to a smaller independent business however, and they’re often using different breeds. Maybe they can’t afford (or qualify for) these fancy hybrids. Maybe they just don’t want them.
If you want a tomato that is full of flavour and ripened on the plant, fed with sugar from the stalk, you can’t get one from a supermarket. It’s just cheaper to pick them early while they’re green, ship them, and let them ‘ripen’ (or turn red) in an enzyme bin, even if they’re not gaining any sugars that way without the plant.
I prefer local home-grown because I prefer delicious tomatoes that last a week in the fridge more than I do sour water-balloons that look pristine and shiny on the counter for twice as long. I buy my food to eat it, not look at it.
You’re describing personal taste. None of what you’ve said establishes these vegetables as “shitty.”
Your description of how seeds are managed at a genetic level by larger corporations is spot-on, however.
You’re describing personal taste.
If your takeaway from them is that veggies modified to ship, picked green and gassed to ripe is personal taste, you really haven’t a leg to stand on.
He literally states: “I prefer.”
Are you looking for an argument on his behalf?
I’m calling you out on
None of what you’ve said establishes these vegetables as “shitty.”
But now that i looked at your post history, it’s rather pointless,
Just blocking you as another troll.
That’s silly. I didn’t look at your history because I’m not a creeper.
Because they taste like shit? They’re also less nutritious too. The entire fucking point of food is to eat it, and we’ve developed varieties that taste bland, are unsatisfying, and are less nutritionally complex. We have un-fooded our food.
Shitty flavour. Shitty nutrition. Shitty anti-trust profit practices.
‘Shitty’ is an adjective for value. Value is personal. Any answer for why somebody would value the food less and consider it shitty is the question you’re asking, and if you don’t like that answer, then your question is dishonest.
You said, “I buy my food to eat it, not look at it.”
Now you’re claiming the opposite while also establishing your personal preference as the standard for non-shitty.
Do you see how this is confusing to anyone reading your comments?
How am I claiming the opposite? I prefer food that is nice to eat. I continue to maintain I prefer food that is nice to eat. I enjoy home-grown tomatoes. I don’t buy supermarket tomatoes because they are not nice to eat.
Did you miss the part where ‘shitty’ is a personal assessment with no objective value? If all you care about is profit margins, then hybrid breeds aren’t shitty, that’s why they use them. But I’m not a person who sells fruit, I’m a person who eats them. Therefore, shitty is a measure of how nice they are to eat.
You are a stranger on the internet. I thought you were asking why a person might consider them shitty, and I answered in good faith. Then you made it obvious you just want to sea lion.
If you think my job is to convince you why you think they’re shitty, that makes no fucking sense, and I’m not going to do that. Your opinions are yours. Enjoy your water balloons.
I don’t think we’re speaking the same language. I already laid it out for you.
I’ll remain confused. Thanks for the conversation.
They’re grown for looks instead of flavor and usually picked before they’re ripe, for one. Not to mention the logistics of mass production and transportation means they’ve been knocked around pretty bad by the time they get to your grocer.
Most veggies in grocery stores are bred for things like appearance and shelf life more than actual quality.
I think tomatoes are a prime example of this.
Tomatoes bruise easily, and people kind of want to buy the perfect, round, bright red tomatoes, not a weird lumpy-looking, funny colored bruised up one.
So big farmers grow tomatoes that look pretty, and are sturdier to better handle being shipped thousands of miles, that will last better on grocery store shelves, etc.
But there’s trade-offs there for things like texture and taste. That perfect-looking tomato may be bland and watery.
They may also be doing stuff like picking them before they’re fully ripe and artificially ripening them with ethylene gas or something later in a warehouse.
When you get tomatoes from a smaller, local farmer though, they don’t have to be shipped as far, or sit around in a warehouse or grocery store as long, so they don’t need to pick varieties based on shelf life and ability to stand up to shipping, and can instead grow varieties that taste good. And they can pick them at their peak ripeness because they’re going more directly from the field to the consumer and they don’t have to rely on tricks like ethylene.
My wife isn’t a picky eater, but when we first started dating she thought that she didn’t really like tomatoes.
But she had only ever had regular grocery store tomatoes.
Until we moved in together and I grew some myself. Then she discovered that tomatoes can actually be really good. Now she can’t get enough of them, as long as they’re good tomatoes.
And I didn’t even grow any particularly fancy tomatoes. That first year that I made a convert of her I just had some regular ol’ beefsteak, Roma, and cherry tomatoes that I picked up as pre-started plants from Walmart or home Depot or somewhere like that, and grew them in pots on the patio of our apartment. Basically entry-level gardening, but that was enough to blow her mind.
Another year I grew, I think the variety was called something like “mucho nacho” jalapenos. We love jalapenos to begin with, but holy shit. That particular variety was everything we ever wanted a jalapeno to be. We had one or two other varieties going that year to have a comparison, but that one stood head-and-shoulders above the others, bigger, a little hotter, and just plain tastier.
And farmers can probably get their hands on even better varieties than whatever I could get at a big box hardware store, and have the know-how to really give them ideal growing conditions.
I’ll add to that - a good tell tale of a tomato NOT being over-engineered pitbull is it having green “shoulders” near the steam, especially if it’s pearl shaped. That’s a sign of it being of the heirloom variety.
Generally green shoulders are a sign of the tomato NOT being artificially ripened.
Well fuck Pierre I guess.
Pierre is worth the upcharge simply because you don’t have to walk all the way across town and back. In real life, grocery stores are unfortunately more convenient than farmer’s markets.
cause farmers markets are fake.
Its nothing but assholes buying shit wholesale from the same distributors that your supermarket gets their shit from (at much higher prices due to not having the super markets favor of volume), then pretending to be some salt of the earth farmer man/woman trying to get you to buy fruit and veg they “hand grew and loved”.
I literally know a guy who did a bunch of backyard farming and sold stuff at these, so they aren’t all fakes at least
Just look at their table.
If its in generic produce baskets and they are selling like 4 different things that are all available locally, yeah its probably from a local farm.
If the baskets are branded and they are selling 50 different things, yeah its probably from a distributor. (And that ok Tbh)
I live in the northern US. Farmer Brown is not growing bananas here.
This depends on your farmer’s market entirely.
Plenty of the non-fruit/veg stands are also small shops trying to go somewhere with more foot traffic.
nothing but assholes buying shit wholesale
They’re not all fake. Some are. Look for local farms, know your growing seasons. The wholesalers give them so little for their crop it still makes sense for them to sell to you if you’ll buy it.
Even a real farm will wholesale you strawberries out of season if you’ll buy them, they just want to augment their income.
My local place labels where stuff comes from and when it’s corn or pepper season, it’s WAY cheaper than the local market.
Such assholes of course also exist, but here on the local farmers market, the one selling vegetables indicates what is stuff he grew himself, vs things he bought from elsewhere. So if you want to buy things from the actual farmer standing there, you’re perfectly capable of doing so (alas, just selling those things isn’t really an option. Not enough people come to such markets if they can’t find pretty much every vegetable they want…)
And regarding the price in this meme, that’s also a complex story. Can indeed be inefficiencies of smaller scale distribution of the same stuff. But on the other hand there is organic and “organic” farming. There is always a large push by the large scale organic farmers to keep the requirements of being organic as low as possible. So yeah, there is a big difference between large scale farms that just make the bare minimum requirements for being called organic, vs smaller scale farms that actually try to make their farm respect nature (which is kind of the point of being an organic farmer).
And in the end, it’s like all things in life, want to do it properly? Then spend time on actually learning who’s who, what’s what, if there is a farmers market, if they’re serious, i’m sure you can visit their farms. You can learn about the methods they use, and the impact of those methods, and then compare it to other methods of production, and see if it’s worth it for you, and see if the quality difference is worth it.
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There are “farmer’s markets” and then there are farmer’s markets. Riding your cargo bike to the once-a-week market in the urban hipster neighborhood’s park to pay $5 for a tomato is not the same thing as driving out to the actual state-run farmer’s market and spending $5 for a bushel.
Compare:
I live in a major metropolitan center and the farmers market downtown happens once a week.
The price can actually be quite good but you have to have reasonable expectations. If you see strawberries and there are snow banks outside well… Do the math. On the flip side if something’s in season you can often get a good deal.
A farmer’s market is not a grocery store so it does require a bit of savvy. If you see apples and it’s June those are probably last year’s apples from cold storage etc.
I don’t particularly like the notion that it’s unreasonable to expect to be able to get healthy food at affordable prices without being required to use a car…
Or the conflation of using a cargo bike with being some impractical urban hipster.
I mean, I am an urban hipster with a cargo bike… or would be, if I were hip. That part of the comment was self-satire. (Also, I did not say anything about it being “impractical!”)
As for your first notion, I don’t like it either. Now, to be fair, in addition to those farmers markets and “farmers markets” we do also have regular grocery stores that I can also get to by bike. But still, my comment was about factual reality and my actual experience of how it works in my area, and whether I like it or not doesn’t change it.
Sometimes “Farmer’s Markets” sell wholesale and even store bought goods for higher prices.
Sometimes people lie about stuff to make money?? Good god, I hope corporate grocery chains down learn about this ancient and secret power! Imagine what they might do!
Seriously, that article kinda buries the point about how few people doing it they were able to find - yeah it was happening, but it’s absolutely not some common behavior you can expect at a farmer’s market.
(Edit:) Other great quotes from that article:
In California, for example, each stand is inspected and vendors are required to display a certificate that outlines the produce they grow. No reselling of wholesale or out-of-state produce is permitted and markets are inspected by the state on a quarterly basis. Vendors who are caught breaking the rules can face suspensions, fines or even jail time.
Ed Williams, the man in charge of inspecting markets in Los Angeles County, says the system is important to prevent fraud and ensure “the consumer is not getting ripped off.”
Seems like the conclusion of the article is “we (canada) need to get our shit together, look even the US has this figured out”
What am I gonna do with a bushel of to tomatoes?
But, seriously, my biggest issue with buying from “real” farmer’s markets is the gas and time I spend getting there and the ease of buying WAY more than I will realistically be able to actually eat before it goes bad. It’s so easy to buy too much (For me anyway, that 's probably just a me problem).
Preservation (canning, etc) is the usual answer, but don’t underestimate the power of making a shitload of food and giving it away or your neighbors.
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It is indeed a mystery for those who never learned about economics.
