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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.
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
Same.
Also my local non-big-corpo supermarket has a whole section for local farmer stuff year round.
Well fuck Pierre I guess.
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.
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?
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 to 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
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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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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How dare people go to a grocery store.
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.
in my country those are dirt cheap its awesome.
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.
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. 🤬
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
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.
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
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.
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.
