Farmers' Market

May 8, 2018 5:29 AM

Where does the food at your farmers' market come from? In Peterborough, Ontario, much of it is from agribusiness resellers. This made some local farmers upset, and they spoke up to ask for clear labelling of who was and wasn't a local grower. The market was not happy about the attention and kicked out the "dissident" members.
posted by clawsoon (65 comments total)

But unlike in California, there are no legal consequences for resellers who lie about growing the produce they sell.

This is surprising to me, because the kinds of lies that are given as examples seem similar in content to false labeling. If you tell your customers that your produce was grown locally without "chemicals," but it's actually shipped from Mexico and you have no idea how it was treated, then... there's really no regulatory action that can be taken?

It's also bad for the markets in the long run. If word gets out that their vendors are resellers and you're paying premium for produce that's just what you can get in the grocery store, who's going to want to go?

My local market is producers only, and I probably wouldn't go otherwise.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:44 AM on May 8, 2018 [11 favorites]

The funny thing is, farmers’ market kicks out actual farmers who did not even call for the expulsion of resellers, just clear labelling of who resells and who does not, for allegedly not being courteous enough to the crooks. Who stands to profit? Is the whole farmers’ market concept in Canada a racket? That particular market certainly seemed very afraid of whistle-blowers.
posted by Laotic at 5:59 AM on May 8, 2018 [9 favorites]

On a much smaller scale, this has long been a dirty secret with those little “mom n pop” roadside stands that pop-up around here along county roads and the like throughout the summer. The “vibe” is that they’re selling local tomatoes, corn, melons, etc., whereas the truth is that they’ve purchased much of their wares from an area wholesaler, and it’s really no different from what’s for sale down at the local supermarket.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:05 AM on May 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

Huh, now I'm wondering about my local farmer's market in San Antonio.... Wonder how I can check.
posted by sotonohito at 6:06 AM on May 8, 2018

Is the whole farmers’ market concept in Canada a racket?

Maybe not in a place like, I dunno, Vancouver Island. In and around the GTA I would say yes.
posted by Evstar at 6:13 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is also somewhat of an issue at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, which holds a farmers market on Saturdays.

However, I believe they do require labeling, and as you get to know the people there, you learn who is a farmer, and who is essentially a grocer, and just bringing their stuff over from the Foodland Ontario terminal. If you talk to the different sellers, you can figure it out pretty easily.

The problem is, if you want to hold a farmers market year round in Ontario, you're going to have to do something about January, where if you limit vendors to local farmers only, you're going to have a bunch of tables with root vegetables only, and maybe one or two hothouse growers. I think the ideal situation is to have a mix of local growers and well-sourced (and clearly labeled) imports.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:20 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

Yeah, out here in oh so progressive Northern California we stopped a CSA box when the produce (which had an amazing proportion of radishes and romaine lettuce) started showing up from the farm with bands that looked an awful lot like the same ones on the produce at the grocery store, and we were told "oh yeah, those are from our partner farms".

And our "local" farmer's market has vendors from 200 miles away. It's hard to imagine that driving a beater van 400 miles to sell some produce is less polluting than aggregating it into a semi trailer for that same trip.

I want to believe, but when I'm buying a commodity it takes a substantial amount of trust to believe that I'm doing "the right thing", and there's an awful lot that smells disingenuous there.
posted by straw at 6:22 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

For example: it's already May, and we might only start to have local ramps, and maybe fiddleheads, this weekend. Any asparagus you're seeing (and there is a lot of it right now) is either hothouse, or imported.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:23 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

I wonder if you ginned up a "DISCLOSURE" form, that let you fill in the product, had a statement that it was locally produced by the vendor, and require them to provide their business address and signature, if that would change the tone.

YES, it's approaching sovereign citizen fringed flag woo, but you know, if they're not lying, why wouldn't the officially certify it?
posted by mikelieman at 6:25 AM on May 8, 2018

It looks like the farmers market gave all of the vendors a vote and the majority of vendors voted to remove the actual farmers instead of having to disclose that they are resellers. Tells you all you need to know about that market.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:32 AM on May 8, 2018 [12 favorites]

If you talk to the different sellers, you can figure it out pretty easily.

You'll need at least one skill point in farmer-compatible small talk. Any topic of conversation will do, you could even start with the weather if you can't think of anything else. The local farmers are the ones who don't respond as if they're afraid you'll discover that they're not local farmers.
posted by sfenders at 6:34 AM on May 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

We had a supposed "farmer's market" in our town that was literally just reselling commercial produce past its sell-by date, and a few jars of semi-local honey. Happy to say they're not in business any more.
posted by Foosnark at 6:37 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

This is an example of how corporate expansion fetishism is a cancer on society - here you have consumers who've clearly stated they prefer to buy goods from their local growers, and local growers who are finally getting an opportunity to make a living again. It all makes sense and farmers markets return to every community in Canada during the growing season.

But then something happens - some Richard Florida flunkie sees farmers markets as a lifeblood of modern urban planning and they want to expand them and extend them past the growing season because they're "great for community." So now instead of a bunch of tables and homemade signs, farmers markets are moved to bigger spots, with higher rents, and a more professional feel. And here's agribusiness who've recognized that direct-to-consumer selling is not a fad. So now they produce a bunch of product lines and labels that look rustic and local and are able to trick the average consumer into thinking they're a local product. You also get people who buy jewelry lots on Alibaba or have a relationship with a t-shirt sweat shop for their "locally inspired designs" and then put them on a few cross-sections of tree stump and refer to themselves as an "entrepreneur." And the people leading the "expand the farmers market" movement don't care who sells so long as the money is good and the product looks "authentic."

You see this with local music festivals too - at the beginning, they're served by local craft brewers and local restaurants or food trucks. Then they expand, and expand, and suddenly you're served some InBev corporate beer and Thai Express because the local craft brewers and food producers either can't keep up with the demand or the festival gets tens of thousands of dollars of cash for the opportunity. You can also see this on Etsy, which was never a bastion of local entrepreneurship, but is basically a drop shipping site now for factory made "artisinal" pieces that make it impossible for an actual person making actual things to sell anything.

It would be nice if we could find a way to keep the "catalyst" corporate expansion community types out of our authentic or quasi-authentic community endeavors because the inevitable end is them congratulating themselves for expansion while completely tearing the fucking heart out of it. Be distrustful of anyone telling you they want to "build community" or who are trying to scale something authentic and local. Scale very rarely makes anything good better.
posted by notorious medium at 6:38 AM on May 8, 2018 [41 favorites]

We get some portion of our fruit and veggies from the produce stalls at one of the local Latinx weekend markets. They're mostly cosmetically-imperfect produce from the same agribiz shipments that the supermarkets in the area use (therefore, not organic nor even close to qualifying as local), but they're also a significant fraction of the price and hey remember back when limes were a dollar or more apiece because there was a shortage? The price at our usual produce stall had increased to a scandalous four for a dollar.

This doesn't bother me nearly as much as when I lived in Michigan and the town's farmer's market was dominated by two or three vendors with ridiculously immense spreads selling not just suspiciously out-of-season produce but also commercially-produced baked goods. Everybody knew which vendors were defying the code of conduct but the market's organizers could never be arsed to do anything about it, despite public and published complaints and a backlog of local farmers lobbying for table space.
posted by ardgedee at 6:50 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

I used to live next to a pretty great farmer's market (Somerville, MA) and, pointedly, it didn't start until late May when local produce started being available. It used to be just fruit and vegetables but then expanded to local fish, local meats and eggs, and locally baked goods. There's a winter's farmer's market too in a different location but I never bothered, hopefully any produce in there is hothouse grown or root vegetables. I understand the appeal of year round local produce buuuuuut there's this wee problem with climate and three feet of snow and stuff.

Now I'm lucky enough to live on a street with not one but TWO farms that sell directly to the public, so I definitely know where my veggies/meat are coming from. Still only self serve for the meat and asparagus, season doesn't really kick off until next week here in MA.
posted by lydhre at 6:59 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

Oh man, this reminds me of the farmer's market I went to in Nashville in 2008. Some of it was local. Some of it wasn't. You could totally tell on a quick glance, but I remember how weird it was to realize that some of what vendors were trying to sell was just grocery store flats of produce.

Then again, there was the weekend I bought two cases of cheap tomatoes, and spent enough time wrangling them that I dyed my fingernails for days, so it wasn't bad, all things considered.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 7:04 AM on May 8, 2018

notorious medium,
I don't think it's exclusively large agribusinesses who are exploiting this. For example, the vendors at the West Side Market (open 4-5 days/week) are mostly still family-run businesses with no more than 1-2 locations; most just go down to the food terminals to pick up trucked in produce and meats from across the continent and world; a very small minority work with local farmers and ranchers.

I understand the frustration and hate but I think it's reactionary and hyperbolic to paint everyone who opportunistically participates in such 'cash-grabbing' efforts to be a part of a corporate conglomerate; there are certainly individuals and smaller companies who are carpetbaggers.
posted by fizzix at 7:14 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

In this case, it sounds like some of the worst offenders are local farmers who've found it more profitable to resell warehouse goods rather than their own.
posted by clawsoon at 7:25 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

from at least the 1970s, if not earlier, my family shopped at the Weston Farmer's Market (the Toronto inner suburbs had them 30 years before downtown "invented" them). We talked to the farmers, saw them every week during the summer, watched their kids grow up. They sold the same produce year after year: the guy with peaches didn't show up with tomatoes one year, etc. At one point, my mom, my aunt and I worked for an apple grower, visited her orchard, etc. There was some re-selling: the apple seller also bought wild blueberries from pickers who were farther north (sometimes as far as James Bay), and sold them on. But everything was much, much cheaper than a grocery store, because we were cutting out the middle men.

That's not to say there weren't re-sellers who were picking up big loads from the Ontario Food Terminal - there definitely were. We could tell because they sold bananas. We didn't shop at those stalls (even then, it must have felt like cheating).
posted by jb at 7:29 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

any portmanteau in a storm:

It looks like the farmers market gave all of the vendors a vote and the majority of vendors voted to remove the actual farmers instead of having to disclose that they are resellers. Tells you all you need to know about that market.

That's not what the story says (third link in OP):

The farmers market association called a vote in the winter on whether the five farmers who'd spoken out about resellers should be allowed to stay.…After the vote was held, Manske was permitted to stay. But the board later overruled that decision and sent a bailiff to each of the five farms with a letter informing the growers of their removal from the market.

posted by adamrice at 7:38 AM on May 8, 2018 [9 favorites]

I know my farmers' market is at least mostly real because in the summer there is nothing to eat but seminole pumpkins and okra and Malabar spinach. Last week I bought some "organic peaches" off this one lady that normally sells nothing but I'm spacing on the name of this stuff, but it's a ditchweed that she's marketing as some kind of wonderherb. So she has that in every form and suddenly last week apropos of nothing peaches. I bought some and cut one open today and it was... ambrosia. food of the gods. I don't know where she got it, but if it was grown in the state of Florida I will eat my hat because our peaches are tiny, rock-hard notsogoods. It wasn't a grocery store peach, either, because grocery store peaches are dryer lint inside. God that thing was incredible. Breakfast memories...

I would be thrilled to eat some of that archer daniels midland produce that gets plowed under because it's got an extra bubo or two. I would patronize a market that sold that stuff and was honest about it.

Also a concept I invented called "brownfield organic," which is when somebody gets some land that used to be, I don't know, a coal tailings pit, and they want to grow food on it to bring the ailing land back to healthy sustainability but it can never qualify for organic farming because of its shameful history but they promise never to monsanto it and to keep it bee-safe and farm it responsibly and always tell everyone who buys the produce where it came from and blah blah blah. Brownfield organic. When even vegan isn't masochistic enough.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:38 AM on May 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

There are two "farm markets" in my small midwestern town.

One is open for a couple hours twice a week, May-Oct, and has a dozen or so stalls with different vendors. Some local sellers, some resellers. As far as I know no overall claims are made that it's all local. This time of year the produce is sparse, but the stalls selling handicrafts, eggs, and baked goods are stocked up. They never rent out all the stalls; it's not like there is a waiting list to get in. But it is well attended, on Saturdays at least, and most Saturdays they will have some kind of live music or kids activity. I go every weekend and it is fun.

The other is a single-vendor farm stall that has grown into an enormous year round enterprise. Produce, hay bales, pony rides, pumpkins, flowers. They grow nothing whatsoever and they are notorious, locally, for their OSHA problems, wage-and-hour violations, and fighting with the local gov't about whatever their latest expansion is. But they are on a major road and they have gone all in on making it look attractive and it works; the parking lot is always full. I wonder how many people from the city, drive out to our town to go to the farmers market, and then end up over there?
posted by elizilla at 7:42 AM on May 8, 2018

adamrice you're right. My mistake.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:51 AM on May 8, 2018

Luckily for me, I naturally boycott all farmers markets by virtue of not being assed to leave the apartment before 2pm on a weekend. I’m still working on my coffee about the time they’re pulling up stairs.
posted by rodlymight at 7:52 AM on May 8, 2018 [16 favorites]

This all appears to be pretty good evidence that capitalism, not properly regulated, spreads like a tumor.
posted by mikelieman at 7:53 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

There was some re-selling: the apple seller also bought wild blueberries from pickers who were farther north (sometimes as far as James Bay), and sold them on.

As someone whose grandmother was an avid blueberry picker (and who would sell her surplus to people who would drive it down to Toronto for resale) this is the one thing you can't fake. A wild blueberry is a wild blueberry.

The problem is, if you want to hold a farmers market year round in Ontario, you're going to have to do something about January, where if you limit vendors to local farmers only, you're going to have a bunch of tables with root vegetables only, and maybe one or two hothouse growers. I think the ideal situation is to have a mix of local growers and well-sourced (and clearly labeled) imports.

I'd add that a lot of Ontarians seem oblivious to the fact that southwestern Ontario, Essex County in particular, is home to a very large greenhouse agricultural sector. So it's travelled a lot less further than from, say, Mexico or New Zealand, if that's a primary consideration in your produce shopping.

I was at the St. Lawrence farmers' market here in Toronto back in January, and I was making a purchase when a woman asked a vendor where her fresh herbs came from and she replied, "A greenhouse near Leamington." The inquisitor got all huffy about it, and said, "That's NOT very local."

I almost said to her, "Jesus, lady...that's as local as you're going to get in January in fuckin' Canada."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:53 AM on May 8, 2018 [25 favorites]

Over here our farmer's market in Aberfoyle, less than an hour from Toronto, is local produce only. It's also tiny and seasonal (opens end of May if I recall correctly). All the stalls have a sign saying how far to the farm. No importers. This does mean the produce changes a lot over the season.
It's worth the drive.
posted by PennD at 8:00 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you tell your customers that your produce was grown locally without "chemicals,"

...then you're a charlatan, gulling idiots.
posted by pompomtom at 8:02 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

you're going to have to do something about January, where if you limit vendors to local farmers only, you're going to have a bunch of tables with root vegetables only

I know the CSA I signed up for a while back is at least somewhat legit because this is exactly what happens in the winter months. Or happened, anyway. We couldn't deal with getting that many parsnips every other week, so we just canceled and went back to supermarket groceries.¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by tobascodagama at 8:03 AM on May 8, 2018

I can't speak as to the authenticity of the small farmer's market I grew up with, but it was definitely a warm-months-only thing and the whole idea of running a farmer's market in the middle of a temperate winter does strike me as a bit odd. (Subtropical climates are a different matter.)
posted by inconstant at 8:07 AM on May 8, 2018

...then you're a charlatan, gulling idiots.

I can get pretty annoyed at some of the nonsense people believe about food. But I still don't think that believing nonsense means you deserve to be taken advantage of. People shouldn't be allowed to lie about what they're selling, regardless of if the lies are believable or not.

I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that "idiots" aren't worthy of protection.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:08 AM on May 8, 2018 [10 favorites]

At my local farmer's market, they seem to have sorted the vendors somehow (maybe booth size?), with all the ones obviously selling commodity food off pallets at the back, and the locals with an overabundance of whatever produce is currently in season in the middle. I always stop before the end because the commodity produce seems obvious to me (just compare the tomato ugliness factor if unsure).

The ringers discovered in this investigation do make me wonder about the farmers at the entrance who are often selling the high-value prestige items (meats, honey, etc).

I suppose the question is, can it be improved with regulation, without the regulatory overhead pushing out the locals who occasionally have a glut of beautiful eggplants and take it to the market?
posted by joeyh at 8:21 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sorry for the derail here, but "brownfield organic" is a nice concept. However, brownfield sites are usually rather toxic. You may be able to grow stuff on it, but it tends to draw a fair number of contaminants from the soil into the plants. It could be organically grown and still have some rather nasty stuff in the produce.

There have been housing complexes built upon brownfields sites that make the new owners sign agreements promising not to cultivate edible produce, like in a backyard vegetable garden, for this very reason.
posted by Badgermann at 8:30 AM on May 8, 2018 [12 favorites]

mandolin conspiracy: I was at the St. Lawrence farmers' market here in Toronto back in January, and I was making a purchase when a woman asked a vendor where her fresh herbs came from and she replied, "A greenhouse near Leamington." The inquisitor got all huffy about it, and said, "That's NOT very local."

"How local are you?"
posted by clawsoon at 8:30 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

1) Peterborough is not part of the GTA.

2) I think part of the issue with farmers markets in 2018 is that people have a number of different priorities when it comes to their food. Is the produce locally grown? Is it organic (certified or otherwise)? Is it high quality? Is it unusual varietals? Is it sold by a "small" business? Is it sold by vendors they know and recognize? Is it sold by the same people who grew it? Depending on how close "local" is (as mandolin conspiracy said upthread, there are a lot of greenhouses in Ontario), all of those other than the last one can be fulfilled by a reseller vendor.
posted by quaking fajita at 8:32 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

I don't think it's exclusively large agribusinesses who are exploiting this. For example, the vendors at the West Side Market (open 4-5 days/week) are mostly still family-run businesses with no more than 1-2 locations; most just go down to the food terminals to pick up trucked in produce and meats from across the continent and world; a very small minority work with local farmers and ranchers.

I understand the frustration and hate but I think it's reactionary and hyperbolic to paint everyone who opportunistically participates in such 'cash-grabbing' efforts to be a part of a corporate conglomerate; there are certainly individuals and smaller companies who are carpetbaggers.

I didn't paint everyone with one brush which is why I brought up jewelry sellers and t-shirt sellers as prime examples of the kind of thing that is permeating many farmers markets and is really just traditional retail corporatism in a plaid shirt. What those vendors are doing is basically turning the farmers market into a strip mall with better branding and cheaper commercial rent which is not how they were started, nor how they're marketed.
posted by notorious medium at 8:46 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Is the whole farmers’ market concept in Canada a racket?

It depends. At my local markets, labelling is required but not enforced but it is fairly clear if you pay attention, who is getting their food from the food terminal & reselling especially if you're a regular. In Canada with our rigid seasons & climate, it is pretty obvious what is local and what is not. As much as my partner might like asparagus, our long cold winter has delayed the local stuff and I don't need to buy the Mexican stuff.

The inquisitor got all huffy about it, and said, "That's NOT very local."
My favorite is when tourists come to the St. Jacob's market (speaking of a "farmer's market as strip mall") and get pissy with the Mennonites about how fresh their maple syrup is - "What do you mean it is was made in March! Its October, don't you have anything fresher?"

And in solidarity with my honorary Northern Ontario kin, mandolin conspiracy, I agree only a wild blueberry is a wild blueberry. And I will go further... the only good blueberry is a wild blueberry.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:52 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

traditional retail corporatism in a plaid shirt

Don't get me started about the recent annual "craft show" I attended... So many vendors with "handmade*" kitchy signs... (In this case, handmade means MDF churned out on a CNC router...)...

My eyes were opened to "farmers markets" about 10-years ago in Alberta... Arrived very early one day and watched the semi's unloading pallets with boxes having the same logo's as the food in the supermarket... (And also, Alberta... seasonal crops that normally include mainly root vegetables, corn and wheat... Maybe some berries... But no, Apples are not local, nor Peaches, nor...)
posted by jkaczor at 8:54 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

I hate to tell you guys, but 'wild blueberries' are grown and picked exactly the same way regardless of whether the destination is the supermarket or not (at least in the US) . 'Wild' is as meaningless of a term here as 'natural'.
Source : I worked the blueberry harvest a few years, have no idea what was supposedly 'wild' about the commercial operations we had worked for, but they were allowed to slap the 'wild' label on the result.
posted by twoplussix at 9:13 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

"...brownfield sites are usually rather toxic. You may be able to grow stuff on it, but it tends to draw a fair number of contaminants from the soil into the plants. It could be organically grown and still have some rather nasty stuff in the produce."

Right, so you'd only buy it if you were a serious Gaianist who had arrived at the "not buying green bananas" stage of life and who wanted to use the time remaining to sponge up as much human-generated filth as you could before being interred at sea, or whatever is the most carbon-sequestering method.

Brownfield organic. It's not for everyone. But don't you deserve the option?
posted by Don Pepino at 9:14 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

One of my former colleagues was part of a great project where pigs were farmed at an industrial scale, but according to humane farming practices. They had lots of space and organic food and were generally treated as pets rather than objects. On top of the pig farm, there would be a huge greenhouse, using the heat from the pig farm, as well as the fertilizer. Under the pigs, there would be a natural gas plant. It was totally genius, but didn't happen (yet) because it was neither organic nor cheap.
posted by mumimor at 9:36 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

I hate to tell you guys, but 'wild blueberries' are grown and picked exactly the same way regardless of whether the destination is the supermarket or not (at least in the US) .

Not in Canada. Wild blueberries or low bush blueberries taste and look different then high bush blueberries - it is very easy to see and taste difference. High bush berries are like twice if not more then a wild blueberry. When I first came down south and my mum bought blueberries from the grocery store I thought they were grapes as they neither tasted nor looked like blueberries to me. Generally you don't see wild blueberries in the grocery stores here except frozen or sometimes when in season I've seen them in boutique grocery stores in Toronto. I assume it is because they are low to the ground they are a pain to pick.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:47 AM on May 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

Source : I worked the blueberry harvest a few years, have no idea what was supposedly 'wild' about the commercial operations we had worked for, but they were allowed to slap the 'wild' label on the result.

There is most definitely a difference - as Ashwagandha points out, we're talking about low bush blueberries that literally grow wild. The low bush berries in question.

These wild blueberries are picked in the wild by people who turn around and sell them to roadside buyers who then drive them farmers markets in the southern part of the province. My grandmother was able to make a little extra cash on the side in summer this way, in addition to having a freezer crammed full of blueberries, and having grown up eating nothing but wild low bush blueberries, high bush berries are very "blah" to me.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:02 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wild blueberries are a different plant, but they’re still harvested commercially by huge corporations. That’s why you can buy them in giant bags in the freezer section pretty much everywhere.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:04 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Wild blueberries are a different plant, but they’re still harvested commercially by huge corporations. That’s why you can buy them in giant bags in the freezer section pretty much everywhere.

But by the taste shall ye know the truly wild-picked ones, world without end, amen.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:24 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

That’s why you can buy them in giant bags in the freezer section pretty much everywhere.
It can depend but yeah no argument about low bush blueberries being cultivated. But note that those are frozen and not fresh as Mandolin Conspiracy and I are talking about. They spoil quick which is why they are sold frozen rather than fresh.

But by the taste shall ye know the truly wild-picked ones

It may be mostly from the sulfur dioxide from all that acid rain but they are peerless as far as I am concerned!
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:32 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

Right... but you know they’re fresh before they freeze them, yeah? Those fresh ones you’re buying most likely come from the same huge farms as the frozen ones, no matter what some peddlar tells you about them being “picked in the wild.” They’re just in season, is all.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:41 AM on May 8, 2018

St. Jacob's market (speaking of a "farmer's market as strip mall")

But the apple fritters... St Jakes is a touristy mess, but the apple fritters are god damn delicious.
posted by dazed_one at 10:52 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

likely come from the same huge farms as the frozen ones

Yes they are frozen when they are fresh but they are still frozen. Frozen are fine but in the context of a conversation about Farmer's Markets in Canada, particularly in Ontario and knowing where your food comes from, the fresh (as in not frozen) low bush blueberries I and many others buy are largely not from mass cultivated sources. There might be some farms out there, I have no doubt, but the ones Mandolin Conspiracy and are talking about literally come from people picking, by hand, bushes located on crown land and similar "waste" areas around Northern Ontario (particularly Sudbury and Timmins - the bush is lousy with blueberries). I spent many summers as a kid doing that very job. It is literally a thing.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:10 AM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

I sell my honey (treatment free and foundationless) to a small group of people by word of mouth. They can all come up and see my hives. I get about 60 lbs a year, so far. I keep about 4 lbs. I give about 8 lbs to a friend who houses one of my hives. I donate a few jars to charity. That gives me about 45 lbs a year to sell and it tends to sell out in about a day. Bam. There's a guy in the area that is selling honey billed as local, I'm about 85% certain he goes to costco and repackages it.

I went to a class on cottage food laws in Los Angeles. One of the huge takeaways from the class was, never sell your foods at a farmers market. You'll never make any money because they charge an arm and a leg to sell and you'll always be dealing with the politics.
posted by Sophie1 at 11:17 AM on May 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

I spent many summers as a kid doing that very job. It is literally a thing.

Yes. So are wild blueberry farms, throughout Ontario and Quebec, which produce FAR more than the bush.

but in the context of a conversation about Farmer's Markets in Canada, particularly in Ontario and knowing where your food comes from,

The whole point of the conversation we are having is that you don’t know where any of the stuff at a farmers’ market actually comes from.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:28 AM on May 8, 2018

Winter markets could be barley and squash and turnips and stew meat, as well as baked goods. Maybe pot greens that were grown locally and blanched and frozen then -- pretty sure big freezers are more efficient than small, and it's possible to use them as "batteries" for variable renewable energy.

And someday pork and tilapia and hydroponic lettuce from the design mumimor describes.
posted by clew at 11:31 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

The whole point of the conversation we are having is that you don’t know where any of the stuff at a farmers’ market actually comes from.

Right, which was my point as well. The consumer needs to be informed as their ignorance will be used against them. In terms of wild blueberries - I asked questions of my provider, developed a relationship with them, based on my knowledge of the product I verified the claims to my satisfaction and received product that I knew the origin of and the quality. Yes, it is possible they could be lying to me that it comes from a cultivated farm or whatever but I know that it doesn't because of the questions I asked, the knowledge I developed and the trust I had with the seller. In a situation where the origins of produce are indistinct at best, such as at many farmer's markets, as a consumer, all you can do is ask questions and go in armed with knowledge about the product.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:48 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

this has long been a dirty secret with those little “mom n pop” roadside stands

This is like the only thing I remember about the Lenny Bruce autobiography I read when I was a kid: He dropped out of school/ran away from home and ended up working at a farm on Long Island, owned by a couple who looked like your archetypal grandparents. The farm stand was stocked with apples bought at the wholesale produce market in the city and every weekend, sightseeing city folk would stop and buy a bushel. This was back in the early 40s.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:07 PM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

Hey! I read that when I was a kid. I don't remember the specious farmers. I remember "baby's arm with an apple in its fist," and I remember that he was impersonating a priest and going door to door in neighborhoods collecting for "charity," but his scam got found out because he had a sideline with the neighborhood dogs who got to really like him and were following him around. The dogs developed a shall we say distinctive gait.

That's a pretty fun book.
posted by Don Pepino at 12:30 PM on May 8, 2018

This tastes wild. I can tell from some of the sulphur dioxide and from picking quite a few berries in my time.

Sorry, Ashwagandha... couldn't resist. :-)
posted by clawsoon at 12:48 PM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

My city's farmer's market is just a huge crowd of people fighting for parking, dragging huge dogs through shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, and standing in burrito lines for hours, so I generally avoid it.

I also get a bit confused when it's May and they have tomatoes and sweet corn.
posted by Fleeno at 1:10 PM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

the specious farmers

There is no Google search result for "the specious farmers" (until this page is crawled, I guess), so if someone needs a band name...
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:55 PM on May 8, 2018

The consumer needs to be informed as their ignorance will be used against them. In terms of wild blueberries - I asked questions of my provider, developed a relationship with them, based on my knowledge of the product I verified the claims to my satisfaction and received product that I knew the origin of and the quality. Yes, it is possible they could be lying to me that it comes from a cultivated farm or whatever but I know that it doesn't because of the questions I asked, the knowledge I developed and the trust I had with the seller.

That's just it - you can't just tell people, "welp, buyer beware!" Let's face it: most people are not going to patiently ask questions, let alone "cultivate a relationship" with a particular vendor before they buy produce. You can't ask people to do the same kind of research and due diligence better suited to a major appliance purchase when all they want are some delicious peaches.

So I fully support some kind of regulation on who is allowed to sell at a farmer's market and what they can sell under what kind of label (organic, local, etc.).
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 3:43 PM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

Let's face it: most people are not going to patiently ask questions

Then they might be better suited to purchasing their food from a grocery store.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:48 PM on May 8, 2018

I'm a regular at one of the farmers' markets just north of San Francisco, and a few weeks ago I asked one of the farmers who I'm on a first-name basis with (I'll call him Mike) about an incident that happened 3 years ago:

I was in a long line at one stall, buying dino kale and fennel and tomatoes because their prices are really, ah, economical, when the farmer at a neighboring stall called out, "Hey why don't you all buy from a REAL small local farm?" We all looked at him, but no one replied. He muttered some imprecations. I should have asked around at the time, but I didn't. I just thought, naively, "Aren't all the people here small local farmers? This stall has the name of where they're from right on the sign, so...??"

So I asked Mike recently & he said, "Yeah, how do you define a REAL small local farm. Well, those guys can heap their kale high, price it more cheaply than any of us can, and re-supply aaaaallll day from **refrigerated** trucks. They ARE single-family-owned; none of the family work the stall here cuz they hire a crew of young people for that; they have lots of land scattered around California, and some in Mexico, and they truck it in from those locations. Big economies of scale. I don't consider them 'small,' but they DO grow the food they sell. Also, they do have lots of regular customers. Maybe their cheap prices undercut and siphon customers away from those of us who farm on 20 acres or less. We can't afford refrigerated trucks and no way can we sell kale for as cheap as they do. Maybe some their customers become our customers too for the specialty vegetables we grow that they don't. What do you think?"

I still buy from Big Small Farm, but I've started buying a lot more from the 20-acres-or-less stalls. Oh and one stall has a sign up about how their strawberries, broccoli, artichokes, etc are brought to you by a Proudly Unionized workforce. I'll have to get on a first name basis with them too.

& oh yeah, in high school, I worked for some guys at a farmers' market who did grow what they sold, but also, way early in the season, had us transfer tomatoes from boxes marked "California" to their own local boxes. The market was in Calgary, and they were based in small-town Alberta, Canada. They were super-nice to the customers and treated us like shit (got annoyed when I took time to each lunch...oh and one of the brothers, who was at least 30, had plans to marry a local high-school girl when she turned 18 and graduated. I always wondered how that turned out).

My bottom line: talk to the farmers. Talk to a bunch of them, so you can triangulate who's just a re-seller, who's a real farmer AND a decent person, and who's a real farmer who kisses up to customers and is also an asshole, both in general and especially to subordinates.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 5:52 PM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Being in California really spoils you, you genuinely can get local fruits and vegetables all year round at the farmer's market or CSA. I can't blame the folks in Calgary much!
posted by tavella at 6:30 PM on May 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

The language used by the board (last link in the FPP) to describe the folks they ousted was so over-the-top. Calling them “disidents” (sic); saying if we get rid of them the “market will become pleasant and happy again”; but if not, the city won’t renew the market’s lease, the “campaign of malice” will continue and the “disident vendors will take over the board and the market.” It’s crazypants, and I think that’s why I can’t stop looking for more info. And man, the story just keeps getting better.

So back in January, after the vote to remove the “disidents,” the Peterborough City Council apparently considered taking over the farmers’ market, but decided to hold off for now and give them a chance to sort out their issues. Lots of promises of more transparency, we’ll get it sorted and move things forward, we want it to be open to all vendors including resellers. But it can’t happen overnight, might take a few years before everything is pleasant and happy again.

Then last week these vendors get kicked out of the market. On Monday, the City Council directed city staff to monitor the market and make sure there aren’t any violations of its licensing agreement with the City (sribd). That agreement doesn’t appear to contain any requirements as to vendors being local, but it does define a farmer as “a Person who owns or operates a farm” (note the use of or, not and), but it does require the market to “Use its best efforts to prevent the sale of factory manufactured goods during the Farmers Market.”

But then! Tonight, it turns out that, while they may not be violating the licensing agreement, the market “hasn't had enough local producers selling homegrown food, over the last six years, to even be considered a farmers' market under provincial regulations”! Ontario regulations require farmers’ markets to have at least half the vendors grow and sell their own food, and this market is somewhere south of that - but even the real number is disputed, with official figures putting it between 40 and 48 percent of vendors, while one of the recently booted “disidents” says it’s no more than 30 percent!

Joelle Kovach of the Peterborough Examiner has been following this story for months and seems to pretty plugged in, and I am so grateful to her for that. I can’t wait to see where this goes next!
posted by nickmark at 10:00 PM on May 8, 2018 [7 favorites]

There seems to be an assumption that specious farmers will wilt under the heat of your inquisition.
posted by tirutiru at 12:35 AM on May 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

Oo, there are provincial regulations they're afoul of? That was reckless.

I went looking for what the regulations are in Seattle. For the organization managing the second-through-nth biggest neighborhood markets:

All fresh farm products must be grown, produced or foraged in Washington State, and all fresh farm products must be grown, produced, or foraged by the farmer/vendor who is selling them, on land that is actively managed by the grower.

Any violation of these rules will result in the product being immediately removed from the vendor’s tables and possible revocation of the vendor’s Permit to Sell.
Interpretation of these rules is at the Market Manager’s discretion with
possible review by the NFM Board of Directors.

Only farmers, ranchers, fishers, apiaries, nurseries, and foragers may sell fresh farm products. Farmers and nursery operators must propagate all plants and flowers from seed, cuttings, bulbs or plant division. Honey vendors must be the owner-operators
of bee hives from which they sell honey; hives must be registered with the WSDA.

(Also Seattle sellers have to list what they're going to be selling considerably in advance, and can be dinged for taking options off the list. The latter seems harsh when a frost can do it in a night.)

The statewide farmers' markets are looser, but labeled:

All Member Markets are required to maintain a Vendor Roster, which shows an average of five (5) Farmers* per market day. Vendors who are Resellers* should not be counted in the Farmer* category, but be listed in a separate Reseller* category.

(It's the statewide program that manages the EBT payments and multiplier, go them.)

And the Sanitary Market on Pike Place has both produce stands, which resell from everywhere, and also farmers' stands, which they seem to gate to balance what's available but then allow turning up on eighteen' hours notice.
posted by clew at 10:22 AM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]