You must log in or register to comment.
Every year, I buy a farm share. My farmer gets his money for the year up front; he doesn’t have to borrow from the bank and he doesn’t have to worry about losing the farm if it’s a bad harvest. He gets to focus on growing stuff.
In exchange, every week during the growing season, I get 3/4’s of a bushel of just-picked vegetables. Some are rare heirloom varieties you generally don’t see; some are items you don’t see much of at all; and everything is fresh and lasts much longer than store-bought would’ve.
That’s an awesome suggestion. How does one do this? Are there a national registry?
Agressive takeover. You come to a farm with a suitcase full of cash and threaten the farmer’s kids and wife. You force him to take the money and when you leave, make sure to point a finger at him and say “I’ll be back next year to buy another share. I own you now!”
“Those are some nice vegetables you got there. Truly would be a shame if someone snuck onto your field every night and took a perfect cartoon bite out of every single one…”
It’s generally called Community Supported Agriculture [CSA]; you should be able to Google “CSA near me” for results. You can also check localharvest.org , but sometimes their info is out of date or takes searching through. Like, a number of CSAs have drop-off points outside the farm that may be closer to you than the farm itself, or they may be willing to bring shares to a local farmers market that they’re selling at, etc, and Local Harvest tells you where their main farm is :(
Each CSA makes their own rules. Some places will give you a pre-filled box; others will let you pack your own box and choose between options (“Take any combination of 2: eggplant, zucchini, squash”). Some offer different size shares, others offer shares for half-seasons, or for 10-12 weeks and you choose the weeks. Some offer work-shares: you volunteer at the farm for a few hours each week, and you get a box of vegetables in return.
Many will also let you do some pick-your-own each week: often these are either excess vegetables (extra PYO tomatoes and peppers are common); are more labor intensive (blackberries); are things that not everyone wants (okra); are specialty items grown in smaller quantities (ground cherries); or are items where personal choice really matters (flowers); etc.
Most farms include some fruits with their vegetables; I’ve had three local CSAs (one couple retired, another was a bad fit for me) and I’ve gotten raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, honeydew, pumpkins, watermelon, apples, figs, pawpaw, and Asian pears.
They may also partner with other local farms to offer other local goods: locally grown grains, honey, eggs, meats, mushrooms, etc. They may have an end-of-season gleaning. Many will have some kind of (paid) community meal during the season, and many also provide produce to local [food banks / shelters / community kitchens / etc].
I will say that it’s a commitment, especially if you get the full season and full box share. The first month can be hard, as it’s a lot of leafy green vegetables, and eating half a bushel of green leaves every week for a month is a challenge. Over time, I’ve developed a set of recipes that let me cook whatever’s in season and preserve a bunch of stuff for the winter; and methods to deal with stuff that I get too much of too quickly.
So in June I make lettuce soup; it’s decent enough (not great), but it’s a fantastic way to use up lots of leafy green stuff when I get tired of salads and stir fries and frittatas, and I can freeze it. Bunches of onions here made into French onion soup and frozen; excess hot pepper gets made into pepper flakes or my own hot sauce; tomatoes become marinara or tomato paste and frozen, or salsa and canned.
I usually sit in front of the tv watching stuff for an hour or two while I slice and dice and chop; and then I spend a couple hours cooking. Half of whatever’s cooked goes into the fridge for the week, the other half gets frozen for winter meals. Anything not used in a dish either gets put into a salad for the week, bagged up for snacks, or frozen to be used as ingredients for later meals.
My freezer currently contains: French onion soup; eggplant Parmesan; pizza; seven-layer casserole; vegetable pot pies; lasagna; stuffed tomatoes and stuffed peppers; zucchini boats; pumpkin pie filling and sweet potato pie filling (just the filling, the pies are too bulky); zucchini bread; butternut squash bread; butternut squash soup; marinara; pesto; garlic confit; blueberry pancakes; strawberry muffins; raspberry jam; quiche; burritos; etc. My goal during the season is to do something with all the food that comes in (my starving Irish ancestors would never forgive me for wasting food!), and my goal during the winter and spring is to eat through my freezer so that it’s empty when the next season starts.
I swear this is propaganda. I have 3 farmers’ markets within biking distance of me (that I’ve visited regularly, there are another 2 on inconvenient days for me), in a capital city. All are cheaper than the grocery store. Yet when I tell people I do my weekly shop at the farmer’s markets, they always say something to this effect. The popular opinion simply does not match the reality. There are some stalls which are more expensive, but they are usually targeting a much higher quality, and are normally prepared products (pasta, sauces, etc.) rather than raw produce.
The popular opinion simply does not match the reality.
or maybe your personal experience is not the reality for everyone, how about that?
Maybe your experience with personal experience is not the reality for everyone, how about that?
crosses arms
Maybe, but in this case I was talking about the popular opinion in my city. That said, my sibling in another city has the same thing going on.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Industrial fertilizer is an unholy abomination
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
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.
I guess not all of them, based on the comments. But yeah, my local “farmer’s market” is one of those. Literally just grocery store produce that came off the same truck with the store stickers on them, but marked up one or two hundred percent.
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.
I know that I buy from resellers, actual farmers have a farm to run and don’t have time to run a stall. The produce is grown by actuall small farmers because the taste is markedly different
Some vendors and farmers markets are better than others. The quality is typically better, and seasonal and local produce that lasts longer and tastes better.
I’m fortunate to live in a city with multiple farmers markets, I found a great farmers market that restaurants often buy from.
Post needs accessibility.
This comment section: people who’ve never cracked open an economics textbook or seriously thought about this.
Intermediaries can bring down distribution costs. It’s pretty easy to see how.
Consider N farmers & M markets: that results in NM trips to distribute all their goods to every market. Add a single intermediary: this reduces to N + M trips to distribute goods. This reduces overhead costs. The farmer can sell in bulk to the intermediary. The intermediary can ship in bulk goods of all farmers to the markets. Less fuel & time is wasted transporting everything.
Partners can specialize in their respective tasks. Farmers don’t need to rent booths, put their goods on display, wait there all day, or handle all the customers at each market.
I guess I just live somewhere with real farms? There are 3 weekly farmers markets near me. All of them are something like 1/2 to 2/3 of the cost, and at least triple the quality of the grocery store.
I’m literally surrounded by farms and the store is cheaper. Unless it’s upick. When you pick it yourself it’s crazy cheap
I’m curious, is your farmer’s market like a grocery store or more like a bunch of kiosks in a central location once a week?
It’s a bunch of stands from local farmers and small businesses. They take up two streets in downtown every Saturday morning
That’s unfortunate. That’s more like a flea market being sold as a farmers market. An actual farmers market is just a grocery store with local products.
Even with upick, it’s more expensive. The cost per pint of blueberries or strawberries we pick on the local farm is way more expensive than the grocery store. I guess they’re charging us for the experience.
Same thing for apples. $25 for a peck. We went to the store after and the same size bag was 99 cents.
Same.
Also my local non-big-corpo supermarket has a whole section for local farmer stuff year round.
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.
Sometimes “Farmer’s Markets” sell wholesale and even store bought goods for higher prices.
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 to your neighbors.
Big box supermarkets routinely pressure producers into accepting extremely low prices so that they can sell them for cheap in their stores. It’s either you accept the price or they don’t sell your produce at all. Farmer’s markets let producers sell their stuff at a price that allows them to live from their work
also economies of scale… industrial farming is well optimised for cheap and heavy; nothing else… when you add more things like flavour, you’re always going to sacrifice price or quantity
Additionally, the quality of food that you find at a market is often much better because it was selected for the market and presented much closer to picking time, vs the gross that was shipped off for warehousing for two weeks before sent to a storefront a week before it starts to go bad
Well fuck Pierre I guess.
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.
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.”
Two local people shared different local experiences and I’m not sure why you think either is more valid than the other.
This was exactly my point. Thank you
Because one guy is pointing out that farmers markets arent ethical everywhere and the other guy is trying to invalidate that.
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?
I meant the guy i replied to originally.
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.
don’t complain when all you have left
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:
-
Too perishable to ship very far
-
Too “ugly” to sell to a distributor or store
-
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.
-
Oh please. Charging a premium for locally grown food is no less a capitalism based endeavor than “Mal Wart”. Presenting it as a failing on someone that complains about an unnecessarily high price is also very on brand. Ugh I’m so tired of people.
How dare people go to a grocery store.
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:
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.
If you’re selling to the stores, you generally pack your produce and truck it to a central depot where they manage the shipping to the stores. If you’re selling it at a market, you have to pack your truck, rent the booth, unpack the truck for display, sit there all day(or hire someone to sit there all day), then pack everything up and drive home. It’s way more work and time to do a market.
Not to mention, some items are too perishable for shipping and/or they’re specialty items with limited supply, so no regional or national demand exists in the first place.
The middlemen exploiting the farmers and putting them in debt. Farmers exploiting immigrant labor to try to make ends meet.
It’s not really hard to work out if your head isn’t up your butt.
