Farmers Markets

The explosion of the farm-to-table movement in the United States has led to a steadily growing number of markets focused on locally sourced products. Reportedly, there is more than 8,600 registered in the USDA Farmers Market Directory.

What is a Farmers Market?

Although we offer no official recognition to the named entity, the Farmers Market Coalition, a farmers market is “a public and recurring assembly of farmers or their representatives selling the food that they produced directly to consumers.”

What is Farm-to-Table (Farm-to-Fork)?

“Farm to table, also known as farm to fork, can be defined as a social movement where restaurants source their ingredients from local farms, usually through direct acquisition from a farmer. Most traditional restaurants get their produce from other parts of the country or around the world. These ingredients need to be shipped long distances, and as a result, they are usually picked before they are ripe to lengthen their lifespan, or they are frozen to prevent spoiling. All of this results in food that is bland and less nutritious.”

We could agree with this statement more. Not only are the ingredients shipped long distances among some concerns, there is little to no information about where and how those were raised. This is an important factor when considering healthy diets free from synthesized chemical components. Additionally, what would otherwise be funding for local communities is paid to corporations who have no concern about the local community. The likelihood of local producers survival is largely dependent upon their community standing. There are naturally occuring, built-in checks and balances within communities that rarely influence growers several states away.

That doesn’t include all local food producers, but it doesn’t take long for the message to reach the producer. In some instances none of that matters, and that is fine. It really comes down to transparency on a very personal and local level.