Biting into a crisp fruit right off the tree is something that is no longer the highlight of summer. In this day and age, produce of all sorts are mass-marketed in supermarkets with pesticides and other chemicals that could cause cancer or birth defects.
The fruits and vegetables in grocery stores have been sprayed, frozen, and treated with ethylene gas, among other treatments, to ship them the long way from farm to store or to make them more aesthetically pleasing. Produce in supermarkets tend to have been specially bred for storage and shipping, not for taste and quality. The farm laborers may be paid minimum wage or no wage at all, and the fruit may even come from foreign countries, such as Peru and other South American countries, that use child labor and/or have unknown histories. The transportation of this produce also leaves a large carbon footprint, adding to both the detriment of the ozone layer and air and water pollution. In the end, the fruits and vegetables aren’t going to be fresh if they must travel thousands of miles. In addition, the longer the gap between harvest and consumption is, the higher the loss of nutrients in food.
However, there is solution to all of these problems. Local farmers’ markets sell delicious produce of certified organic, non-organic, and semi-organic (the farm is in the process of becoming organic) variety, all at reasonable prices.
“In 1998, the FDA found pesticide residues in 35 percent of the foods tested”
According to Local Harvest, a farmers’ market is “a group of farmers [who] sell their products once or twice a week at a designated public place like a park or parking lot… Shopping at a farmers’ market is a great way to meet local farmers and get fresh, flavorful produce!”
The best fruit is the freshest, organic produce from local farmers’ markets. A massive organic strawberry is amazing. There is absolutely no comparison to strawberries found at a supermarket. The strawberries are always dark red, super sweet, and picked at the prime. Best of all, the strawberries at farmers’ markets are often certified organic.
Supermarket strawberries are nearly always not organic, which puts the public at risk for health problems later in life. According to the FDA, at least 53 pesticides classified as carcinogenic (causing cancer) are currently applied in massive amounts to major food crops. Strawberries are grown on the ground. When pesticides and other chemicals are sprayed on the strawberry plants, they stay on the plants, in the dirt where the strawberries lay, and even in the small seed pores of the strawberry, making the pesticides impossible to remove. (In 1998, the FDA found pesticide residues in 35 percent of the foods tested.) You also do not know in what conditions the strawberries were grown. This is not true for only strawberries, but also all fruits or vegetables.
At farmers’ markets, organic vendors are always required to display certification declaring their farm organic, so customers can easily identify certified vendors.
When buying produce at the farmers’ market, consumers know from whom exactly they’re buying. The seller will always be someone from the farm of the produce being sold. Vendors are always eager to talk to customers about how the produce was grown, what the farm is like, or to learn delicious new ways to prepare food.
In addition, farmers’ markets often sell varieties of fruit not typically sold in grocery store, such as purple potatoes and many uncommon varieties of apples.
Most farmers’ market produce is also much cheaper than other organic food stores’ (such as Whole Foods) pricing, because the middlemen that pack and ship the food charge high fees, which are paid by both the growers and by the buyers.
Buying from the farmers’ market not only helps consumers, but farmers as well. Oftentimes, grocery stores and transportation companies will charge the farmers, as well as the consumers, much higher for packing, shipping, and handling. By cutting out the corporate middlemen, farmers’ markets make sure that the money paid goes directly to the farmers and laborers, not to the packaging company. As a result, the farmers earn a much higher profit, which therefore allows them to earn a living wage, as opposed to the cheap labor that many mass-production farms use.
A study of California farmers’ markets titled “California Farmers Markets Price Perceptions” found that 54% of sellers “actually charged lower prices than supermarkets on a cumulative 345 items.” As for the other foods, 44% set prices equivalent to supermarkets on 259 items.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a study found not only that the lettuce sold at the farmers’ market was cheaper by $2.01, as well as much larger, but also that the farmers’ market lettuce was also “greener, had fewer culled outer leaves, and had none of that [tell-tale] sign of old produce – wilt.”
Most of the farms at the farmers’ market are family-run, as opposed to corporation-owned, which allows the farmers to keep their way of life and run the farm the way they want to run it, the way it should be run. A study of 200 communities by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment discovered that as farm size increases, so does poverty. In addition, the smaller the farm, the more productive it is – farms with 27 acres of less are more than ten times more productive (in dollar output per acre) than large farms (6,000 acres or more), while farms with 4 acres or less can be over 100 times as productive.
A National Cancer Institute study found that farmers (most likely those classified as “cheap labor” hired by large industrial farms) who used industrial herbicides were six times more likely than non-industrial farmers were to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a kind of cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency also estimates that about 300,000 farm workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning each year.
Buying from farmers’ markets also helps the environment by reducing the amount of pollution emitted. Supermarket produce often travels for hundreds or thousands of miles to reach stores. On average, the food on an average American’s plate now travels 1,300 miles from the field. There are vegetarians/herbivores, and there are carnivores, but a new term has been coined from the practice of buying food locally, often from farmers’ markets. A “locavore” is someone who buys (and eats) food that was grown locally.
Produce from the farmers’ market is sold only a few dozen miles from the farm. By buying from the farmers’ market, the produce does not travel as far, thus reducing the amount of pollution released from vehicles, and retains much higher levels of nutrition within the fruits and vegetables.
Farmers’ markets have still more benefits. What shoppers find in a farmers’ market is what is in season, so there’s no hassle in memorizing the fruit schedule. The farmers obviously cannot sell the produce well if they are green and sour. Most of the farmers pick their produce at the peak of ripeness, usually the day before or the day of the farmers’ market, while supermarket food is often picked as far as months ahead and artificially ripened using ethylene gas.
Farmers’ markets are one of the nation’s hidden treasures. They’re like cornucopias filled to the brim with deliciously fresh produce. With so many benefits, including excellent customer service, nutrition levels kept high, fair profits for small farmers, and easy-to-find, environmentally-friendly food by reducing transportation, pollution, and harm to oneself, local farmers’ markets are truly the best way to shop for groceries. – VICTORIA LO
