Eight Mouth-Watering Ways to Change the World by Shopping at a Farmers’ Market!
by Gilligan Warmer
- Help your neighbor:
When you buy food from a farmers’ market, you directly support a farm family. Of course, if you buy from an Uber-Market or the Wal-Mart Super Center, you are supporting a farm family too. That farm family just happens to be a giant corporate conglomerate like Archer Daniels Midland and the famous Jolly Green Giant family. I’m sure they all consider their stockholders to be just like family! An average of only 10 cents of every dollar spent on food goes to the grower. The remaining 90 percent of your money goes to pay for the food’s transportation, packaging, and marketing. (Unconfirmed information implies that some of the money goes to protection, à la a certain TV series about some guys from New Jersey. Did I mention it was unconfirmed?) Local farmers who sell direct to consumers cut out the middleman and get full retail price for their food—which means farm families can afford to stay on the farm, doing the work they love, and you can continue to get the FOOD you love.
- Save the environment:
Food travels on average 1,500-2,500 miles from farm to table. Food produced and consumed locally uses less fossil fuel for transportation and requires less material for packaging compared to mainstream food production. The food is often treated with fewer pesticides and fertilizers than usual. Many farmers’ markets specialize and cater to the organic food niche. Even if the local farmers are not certified organic, it is far more likely that they have a direct stake in how their land is treated. The Archer Daniels Midland family doesn’t give a hoot whether or not they have used up the soil or dumped too many chemicals into the local aquifer. As for the Jolly Green Giant, well, there have been reports that he actually enjoys super doses of pesticides. To each his own, I guess. The local farmer’s family actually lives on the land that they work and has to drink from that aquifer. Who do you think has more of a stake in keeping the land healthy? (Hint: not the corporation!)
- Protect open space:
Statistics compiled by the EPA and the Massachusetts Audubon Society indicate that unplanned and unchecked development is eating up more than 1,200 acres of open space, farmland and wetlands each week in New England—including nearly two acres an hour in Massachusetts alone. According to the USDA, the U.S. has lost 4.7 million farms since 1935. Buying local food makes farming more profitable and selling farmland less attractive. Have you enjoyed driving out into the country and appreciated lush fields of crops, meadows full of wildflowers, and picturesque red barns? That landscape can survive only as long as farms are financially viable. When you buy local food, you are preserving the agricultural landscape. Take a look around Rhode Island and Massachusetts. There is hardly any open space left anymore. Most farmers would rather keep their family farm. Chances are, it’s been in the family for a while, or at least they plan on passing it down. The choice boils down to going broke and into debt, or selling the land to the McMansion developers. So you are keeping New England open and green for future generations.
- Strengthen your community:
When you buy direct from the farmer, you are re-establishing a time-honored connection between the eater and the grower. Knowing the farmers gives you insight into the seasons, the weather, and the miracle of raising food. You also have a greater input into what gets produced. You actually get to talk to the farmer. You can tell him or her your likes and dislikes. You get to give the farmer an idea of what the local customers are looking for. You get to vent. You get to talk about the weather. I hate to pick on the Archer Daniels Midlands family, but I dare you to try that with them. You will be escorted off the premises. Try complaining to the so-called Jolly Green Giant. He’s really big, and you do NOT want him angry at you. (Jolly, my foot! That guy is like seven stories high and made out of some kind of plant matter!) Of course, if you bad mouth the farmer’s sweet corn, he might give you some instant feedback, of the kind that you wouldn’t get from e-mailing a corporation. At least it’s real human-to-human interaction.
- Boost your local economy:
Independent, family-owned farms supply more local jobs and contribute to the local economy at higher rates than do large, corporate-owned farms. Buying local food keeps your hard earned cash circulating in Rhode Island. Every dollar spent on locally grown food puts at least three dollars into the local economy. I am not an economist, so I don’t really understand how this works. I think that the dollars are kept under some kind of controlled environment, where they split apart, like the way cells do. Perhaps the dollars are cloned. I just don’t know, nor do I pretend to know. Just trust me on this. All I know for sure is that this contributes to the growth of strong small businesses, generates local jobs, raises property values, and leads to strong health care, and education.
- Cut your tax bill:
Farms contribute more in taxes than they require in services, whereas suburban development costs more than it generates in taxes. On average, for every $1 in revenue raised by residential development, governments must spend $1.17 on services, thus requiring higher taxes of all taxpayers. For each dollar of revenue raised by farm, forest, or open space, governments spend 34 cents on services, so local farms keep real estate taxes lower. If you honestly believe that you spend too little on taxes, then good for you! You can take the extra money that you think you need to pay and go to the farmers’ market, and just give it to the farmers. They will know what to do with it. Thank you for you cooperation in this matter. Many people have too much green stuff.
- House our critters:
The habitat of a farm—the patchwork of fields, meadows, woods, ponds and buildings—is the perfect environment for many beloved species of wildlife, including bluebirds, killdeer, herons, bats, manatees, wombats, dodo birds, moose, meese, gnomes, elves, worms, yaks, furbies, orangutans, wild sheep, Carthaginians, robots, and rabbits. If these wonderful creatures did not have the mixed habitat that farmland provides, they would become confused, and they would migrate to YOUR house. Do you really want a bunch of orangutans and robots living in your yard? I can tell you from experience that you don’t. Carthaginians are all right, in small herds. Manatees are pretty cool, too. Gnomes are downright mean. Rhode Island has lost enough wildlife habitat, even in just in the last 10 years. I don’t want to have to someday go to a zoo just to see a wombat. It would be just like that Bruce Dern movie, I think it was Silent Running, where they put all of the plants and animals that were left on Earth on to spaceships, to save them. Do you really think that the robot sheep would allow us to do this? Do you? You’re only fooling yourself. The future without wildlife habitat is unthinkable.
- Indulge yourself:
Local food is fresher, more nutritious, and tastes better than food picked before it’s ripe and after it is shipped long distances. Local farmers can offer varieties bred for flavor and nutrition rather than for uniform size, shape, color, and long shelf life. Fresh produce loses nutrients quickly. Locally grown food, purchased soon after harvest, retains its nutrients. Let’s face it, most of the produce grown on the giant factory farms are made for one purpose, to look good after a 2000 mile tractor trailer ride from the farm to the supermarket. They are more interested in how the food looks than how it tastes or how good it is for you. Then again, if you have a taste for plastic, then disregard that. Those mysteriously fresh tomatoes that are on the shelf in January might just be up your alley. For the rest of us, we shall remain leery of them. We will get our food at the local farmers’ market!
Gilligan Warmer is an expat swamp Yankee Rhode Islander currently living in Ogdensburg, NY.
