Sherry Chandler

Farmer’s Markets

Today is Farmer’s Market Day in Lexington and many towns and cities around the nation. There are many benefits to shopping the farmer’s market in your town, as Bill McKibbon points out, blogging at the TPM Café:

…the loss of community Americans are now feeling may not be just coincidental to our increased wealth but instead correlated. Past a certain point, wealth seems to have an odd, isolating effect.

Consider how Americans spent their money in the years after 1950: mostly, building bigger houses farther out in the suburbs. (And acquiring the screens into which we now peer). These tend to reduce the chances that we’ll run into each other in the course of a day, and that’s just what happened. The average American has many fewer close friends and, of course, eats many fewer meals with family, friends, neighbors.

This hyperindividualism–which should make us so happy since we get to be centered on our own damn selves–seems actually not to work that way, perhaps because we’ve evolved as social animals.

…

Farmers markets are the fastest growing part of the food economy, expanding ten or twelve percent a year. That’s good news because local food systems are less energy intensive than ordering takeout from 2,000 miles away every night. But it’s also good news because the average visitor to a farmers market has ten times more conversations than the average supermarket shopper. It’s not just a different way to acquire calories, it’s a different experience.

Possibly related posts:

Another way to reach sustainability?

Farmer in Chief

The Good (tobacco) Farmer

Democracy can end food crisis

Organic?

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