Farmer's Markets

Many people do not live in California where farmer's markets have the essentials of life, but I had no idea that the farmer's market in my hometown is as organized as it is.  When looking at the sparse website, I clicked on the blog thinking, "Why not?  Maybe there I can find something to blog about."  Farmer's markets have been labelled as something of a saving grace to our supermarket-itis.  In an enormous store, it's truly difficult to find the things you really want while the items you don't need are circled around you.

Farmer's markets are good and bad.  First, they allow you to choose your own food, to see the person that grows it and harvests it.  In the movie Food, Inc. they show a farmer who does butcher animals but keeps them (when they're alive) in such a way that it's more natural for them and does not in any way resemble the cruelty that can be present in factories.  This world was given to us for the care and keeping, not for exploitation.  If we do not realize that our world is not ours for the killing, than kill it we will.  Farmer's markets attempt to combat this by encouraging us to think about what we put in our mouths, something we don't do a lot of in America.  Our dietary and health trends demand a change, even more so than the environmental challenges, and becoming involved in our food again is part of the answer.

Unfortunately, farmer's markets can be a place for extremely high prices for no actual difference in product.  The nutritional value of the food doesn't increase because it came from around that area, but it does cost more.  The governmental policies favor large companies in agriculture and smaller farmers are being run into the ground.  For someone who is competeing against a factory farm next door, the only option is to raise prices. But by doing so, farmer's markets cut the lower class out of the bracket for customers, and these are the people who need access and knowlege about fruits and vegetables the most. In America, we have a problem that reaches beyond farmer's markets and the locavore movement. The idea that is important isn't that we should only eat what's around us. If that was truly plausible, Iowans would be eating a whole lot of cort and not a whole lot of citrus. The true goal of the different food movements is to get people to understand that what they put into their mouth matters and affects their lives and those of their children.