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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
Same.
Also my local non-big-corpo supermarket has a whole section for local farmer stuff year round.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
Well fuck Pierre I guess.
Fun fact, CalFresh (the California EBT/food stamp program) will give you $60 for free per month if you spend it on fruit and veg, and a lot of farmer’s markets participate in the program
I wanna know how the fuck that shit works, because I buy fruits and vegetables with it; never get any of that $60 free shit (it shows up as a balance on the app so I can see when/if it came from that or the normal balance). The paperwork just says it's applied automatically at check out, yet that absolutely is not how it has been working.
Edit: Apparently it's only at very specific locations; none of which are in or around my city. 🤬
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".
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Economy of scale is a real thing.
Sometimes it is because you are just not visiting a real farmers market...
and sometimes it's because farming in the area hasn't been competitive in decades, and cannot keep up with imports even if they cut out middle men and even if they get subsidised like hell, making you wish the government would just rip the band aid of instead of tying up workers in this industry without a future for another decade, food security my ass, what's the point of that if we aren't feeding people at all and instead turning perfectly good vegetables into bio-fuel since energy companies pay more for them then our starving population can?
Wow. This is a true shit take.
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.
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