Of course they are. I love farmers. I wish I could buy their fresh produce directly similar to how it occurs in small European towns and city markets. I want local farmers feeding me and my family. But… those farmers apparently prefer that I live in a suburb and go to the grocery store and buy produce from somewhere else instead so they can have a highway and easy parking to the city center they don’t go to.
I have lived in situations where there was a good farmer's market nearby where I could buy produce directly from small local farmers, and I have had the same thing happen to me. I began looking forwards to eating a salad, then stopped when I no longer had easy access to the good stuff.
The various things that happen to produce destined for a shelf halfway across the country are really just not appetizing.
Are there no farmers selling fresh produce anywhere around? I'm so used to these drive-by honesty stores (take what you want - usually vegetables, fruit, eggs, milk, honey etc - and pay in the box) in rural areas.
Somehow people expect to buy straight from the farmers at the farmers market located in the downtown of a large city, ignoring the fact that the farmers do need to.. farm their land. Traveling with their goods back and forth within the city isn't really an efficient use of their time.
I live in the country. Most of the year I can get food from farms that are located less than 2 miles from me, all on my street. It's phenomenal. The closest decent grocery store is an hour plus, so its nice to be able to get stuff from neighbors and it makes you eat healthy.
>Small amounts get sold locally via the farm shop system (high quality/price), but overwhelmingly to be economically viable you have to be part of the "system".
We have no problem getting most of our food locally, and as often than not it's cheaper than the grocery store; eggs, meat, vegetables (I'm in Canada, so not much fruit). I assume this is fairly common outside the urban centres.
Yes, farms need market access. But that market does not have to be a sprawling suburb, it can be a decently dense town or city. Also, market access is relative depending on product. Farmers concentrating on crops like wheat and corn don't care about the distance to cities, as their product is traded globally. For fresh produce, distance is a real concern, but on the other hand you don't need a lot of land to fulfill the need of even large cities. You could conceivably provide most fresh produce from inside city limits if urban planning would see this as necessary. Production/acre for something like tomatoes is really huge, depending on the methods used.
The idea that farmers markets are commonplace in rural areas is mostly BS. They exist in cities for sure, but you pretty much need an urban population (and probably a fairly well-off population) to really support a farmers market.
Just because farms exist in an area doesn't generally mean the people in that area are getting their food from those farmers (at least directly). That's mostly a relic of an old vision of farms that grew every type of produce and had a variety of livestock instead of the corporate monoculture farms that dominate today.
I'm in a very small town right now and it's a reasonable driving distance from farms. It looks to me like the average farm stand is simply some clever person buying crates of produce at the wholesaler.
No shortage of healthy food at the local grocery stores of course.
I expect that people who wave their arms about 'food deserts' could probably stand to visit either small towns or urban areas and form an opinion based on actual experience.
This makes for an interesting comparison to Japan. I’ve lived in rural Tokyo for about two months, and local produce is a thing there. The produce doesn’t need to be sold at a market. The farmers just sell their produce on the roadside, right next to their plots of land.
This is also true in some places like semi-rural parts of Dongguan city, Guangdong province of China.
> Fresh vegetables, meat and dairy from nearby farms.
You'd think so, but I've found so many bad fruits and vegetables at Safeway and Whole Foods in Redwood City that I've pretty much given up on getting my produce from there. Local family run markets like Sigona's and Draeger's are much better quality, even if they are a bit more expensive.
I'm not sure how the big supermarkets manage to screw up the relatively short supply chain from farms that are just a few hours away.
Food at US farmer markets are cheaper if two conditions are met: firstly, going to an actual farmers market which tends to be far out of town, secondly, only buying in season produce without hydroponics.
In the US, I live about 100km outside of a major city, so the farms are next door and the food is tasty.
That said, it's really difficult to convince someone to drive 100km to get a normal ordinary head of lettuce with dirt attached to it so they set up stalls inside the city for top selling 'organic artisanal' items that come in nice display cases.
I don't buy from our local chinatown which sources some of its vegetables from farmers who grow right off freeways etc where the land is cheap because of its location.
On the other hand they also buy from farmers who grow their crops off lands more suitable for farming as well.
I associate "localvore" with "farmer's market," not with "vegetable garden." Vegetable gardens sound unambiguously good to me, whereas 50 pickup trucks making 50mi trips to a farmer's market might be worse than 1 semi truck making a 500mi trip to the grocery store.
Oh I didn't mean to imply it's all they bring! Like I said—those farms have amazing produce and they also bring that stuff in. But in my experience at the satellite farmers' markets here in Toronto I've noticed they will also bring their "rustic" vegetables that are scooped up by unwitting hipsters at a premium. The smug small-town guy in me has a brief laugh about it. (If you ever watch An American Pickle a few of the scenes in that are markedly close to reality)
Yes, there are certainly a good number of these, but one of the main reasons I would go to a grocery stores is to buy non-local produce. For instance, avocados or various other fruits aren't grown anywhere near where I live.
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