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Some vendors and farmers markets are better than others. The quality is typically better, and seasonal and local produce that lasts longer and tastes better.
I’m fortunate to live in a city with multiple farmers markets, I found a great farmers market that restaurants often buy from.
“Loss leader” is your clue.
I’ll leave the rest to you to work out.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
About 50% of the human race is middlemen and they don’t take kindly to being eliminated.
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:
… isn’t the market a middle man? They charge for the booths.
No, they’re a cost of doing business.
i.e. a middle man
A farmer could set up a stand outside their driveway and advertise on Facebook, but the farmer’s market middle man acts as a go between to handle logistics and advertising and customer availability and creates a safe marketplace for customers and vendors.
No, that’s not what middle man means.
A middle man is an intermediary. I do not buy food from the farmers market. I buy it from farmers who have paid rent to be at the farmers market. The market is the landlord, not the middle man.
Landlords are middle men.
Is Amazon not a middle man? In many cases you’re buying directly from the seller, just like at a farmer’s market. Amazon, like a farmer’s market, exists to facilitate trade between sellers and buyers. It just collects rents.
No. Absolutely not. Landlords are middle men between tenant and the earth. But they are not middle men between consumers and commercial tenants.
Amazon is ABSOLUTELY a middle man because you DO NOT buy directly from the seller you pay Amazon and Amazon pays the seller.
Landlords are middle men between tenant and the earth. But they are not middle men between consumers and commercial tenants.
And commercial tenants can’t access customers without the landlord.
Face it, they’re middle men.
No, that’s just not true. You are trying to win through sheer force of linguistic bullshit. Landlords are LITERALLY not in the middle of any transaction between producer and consumer. They are BEHIND the producer.
Look at it from the flow of money. I get money from my wage. I go to a shop. I give the shop my money and receive a commodity. I do that every day, once per day. On the 30th day, the shop owner takes some of my money that I gave them, and some of the money other people gave them, and gives a specific amount to the landlord.
A middle man, on the other hand, is IN THE MIDDLE. The SHOP is a middle man for the PRODUCER. I go to the shop and buy a toy made by Hasbro, the shop owner takes my money and buys a replacement for that toy from Hasbro. The toy is made by Hasbro and used by me but the shop is in the middle of the transaction. The more toys I buy from Hasbro, the more the middle man makes. This is NOT the case with a landlord who IS NOT IN THE MIDDLE and therefore receives a fixed amount from the shop regardless of how much I spend because the landlord has no idea how much I spend at the shop because the landlord is NOT IN THE MIDDLE.
A lot of these markets are more community-focused and, yeah, they’ll charge something but not beyond the actual cost of putting the market together. They’re not making a profit. In some places the state or municipality will organize the markets in order to foster the local food/ag scene.
Do you think those things mean something isn’t a middle man?
The cost of putting the market together is always going to be higher than selling out of a van. Bigger venue, higher costs. It’s worth it for the increased sales, but the middle man still gets a cut. Even if there’s no profit, even if the cut is fair, there’s still a cut.
I made no such claim. The markets I’ve worked with have never taken a “cut” (I’ve seen the financials of some of these things. They’re non-profit, so no reason not to be transparent). They’re literally raising funds for the bare minimum of operations, so any use fees for the space and to ensure continual operations. These are volunteer groups.
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
Wow. This is a true shit take.
…because the sheer honesty of it offends your delicate sensitivities?
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
How dare people go to a grocery store.
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.
Indeed. But ‘starvation’ wages aren’t typical in migrant farm work.
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.
Because one guy is pointing out that farmers markets arent ethical everywhere and the other guy is trying to invalidate that.
This was exactly my point. Thank you
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?
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.
I meant the guy i replied to originally.
Strange, what mysterious land is this where farm laborers are paid fairly. I have traveled to every continent and 40+ countries visiting thousands of farms. Never have I found a place where farm laborers were paid fairly. They are always the abused serfs of the society working long hours for little pay.
I have seen human suffering in vast quantities but never a fair wage.
Yes capitalism is a harsh load of ass everywhere, but the farm jobs I’VE WORKED, aren’t lower pay than other jobs available in capitalism. They tend to be better than average, and farms tend to raise the offer year to year as they are straining for more labor.
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.
don’t complain when all you have left
A 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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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 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.
It’s just the scale of it. And people there are willing to pay more
This is dumb and the amount of people upvoting is a perfect demonstration of why we got a second Trump administration.
The produce at the farmer’s markets in my city costs more than the produce at the grocery store. I still buy it because it comes from farms who don’t use pesticides and it tastes better, but the main point this post is making is often correct.
Your take on the upvotes causing fascism is wild.
Yeah! Funny stuff is dumb!
Listen, maybe I’m jaded, but this just feels like one more lame-ass attempt to cram more propaganda about the “efficiency of big business” down our throats.
Economy of scale is a real thing.
