At the beginning of this year’s growing season, I was frequenting several farmer’s markets a week.
Some might consider that overkill (and they wouldn’t be wrong), especially since my approach to food shopping is not at all European, or in the style of purchasing only what I require at the time. Over the course of the past few months I’ve progressively whittled the number of markets I attend down to one regular Saturday morning trip. For someone like me, with a constant desire to have it all, that’s no small feat. But it was made somewhat easier once I started to open my eyes and discard my naiveté about our markets and how they are generally operated.
Year after year, the number of farmers continues to dwindle as society becomes more technologically advanced and urbanified, yet they must exist somewhere, otherwise who is growing our food? A great, bitter and secret irony in Ontario is that many of the people that you’ll find at your local farmer’s market aren’t actually farmers at all, because strangely enough, not all markets require such a criteria of their vendors. While it’s true that the artisan purveyors at the market have been on the downswing for a while, one thing I always had faith in was the fact that the person selling me my food at the market was connected to it in some way. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases those people lounging around under tents in parking lots and wooded areas are just as likely to have picked up that produce at the local food terminal as they were to have harvested it themselves. I’d read about the prevalence of this dishonesty elsewhere before, but stubbornly refused to believe it was true. Yet, the more I started to inquire about the provenance of the food or a vendor’s involvement in producing it, the fewer answers I was left with. The last straw finally came when I asked a “farmer” what variety of vegetables they were selling and how they were grown, and all I was met with was a blank stare. Any farmer worth their salt or the products in their pickup could tell you which varietals they sweat blood and tears growing for the last few months. Or weeks later when I showed up to another notable market, only to find bananas (not a product that grows in Canada, even) and sweet corn (this was in the beginning of June before the corn would have even been tall enough to eat) available on the tables. And if these faux-farmers are just buying up skids at the food terminal, how is that any different than if I were to purchase said food at a supermarket? My faith in the process having taken a hit, I immediately stopped shopping at any vendors that were unable to provide answers to the simplest of questions. In effect, if they are selling that food under false pretences, why should I believe any other claims they might make about it, like whether it’s local or organic? How is one to know?
In Toronto a body of concerned citizens exists to vet the farmers that sell at their markets; they formed an organization in 2007 called My Market, and their goal is to ensure that the people selling you the food are the people who grow that food, which also helps to certify that the food is actually local. The My Market locations (there are 5) are not exclusively organic, but they are a step in the right direction towards keeping our food dollars within the community. The market that I visit each week happens to be a My Market, and while there are a few things that seem to be missing (decent bread, a meat or sausage vendor and blueberries) the motley group of 10 to 12 vendors are always happy and friendly, and exhibit exorbitant amounts of passion when discussing their wares. Not only will they talk your ear off about the latest assortment of fruit and veg from their farms, but they have the dirt under their nails and smeared over their boots to prove it. In this day and age, authenticity still counts for something, after all.
And that is something I can feel good about. So now you know where I spend my Saturday mornings, but what about you?
Until next time…
Tags: farmer's market, My Market, Purveyors, ramblings
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The surest way to kill a “farmers’ market” is to let vendors sell produce that they picked up at a wholesale market. Local farmers can’t compete with wholesale prices, and they get driven out of the market.
Once the rule gets established that you can only sell what you grow, a local market is mostly self-policing–everyone knows what everyone else is growing! We did have a vendor who brought a bunch of bananas to the market this year, which raised a few eyebrows, but he actually has a banana tree in a greenhouse!