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Syndicate
Mar
31
| Support Your Local Food-Shed |
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| Monday, 31 March 2008 | |
NNN’s publisher, D.J. Johnson, is a regular guy on a mission to help consumer culture evolve and create Sustainable, Humane, Economical, Design — a new SHED for everybody.
 There are some who would say that a Farmers Market is the wrong place to shop if you are on a budget. But if that were true, why then would you set up a farmers' market in the playroom of AS220, Providence’s most renowned artist hive? What do poor, starving artists want with a costly alternative to the Ultra-Super-Save-Wal-Market?
One reason to shop locally might be that if you can’t afford quantity, then quality matters even more. Take starving artist One: Timothy, a tall, thin, bristly twenty-something fellow who makes his living making music and spinning records. He lives in a loft at AS220 on Empire Street, just above the Saturday Market. Timothy was smiling greedily at the bag of fresh baby spinach he was heading home to consume. “It’s good stuff. I like the idea that it so fresh, and that I know where it came from," he told me. "I can actually speak to the person who’s grown it.”
Starving artist Number Two had similar sentiments. While Margaret has never felt particularly rich, despite her arts practice and the subsidy she gets from serving folks at the Fez for tips, she still shops at the farmers market. “I’m a gardener in the summer. I like being connected to my food and I feel compelled to support people who feel the same way," she says. "This is my community.”
My friend Susan is not a starving artist, but someone who is equally devoted to the local, fresh concept of the AS220 market. She repeated what mostly everyone else I spoke had to say. “The food is good, and it’s worth it.”
I asked Sherri Griffin, of Farm Fresh, the organizer of this weekly winter event, what she thought about the dollars-to-value question that is sometimes raised by people on a budget. Her answer was quick and sincere: “Cheap food is cheap for a lot reasons. Not all of the reasons are good.” Sherri drew a picture in my mind of huge farms spread across subsidized land that can be used until it gets used up. The underpaid laborers, using fertilizers and insecticides, crank out tons of market produce a day. “And you could probably talk to them about how they grow their products ... if you lived in California, or maybe Chile,” she says.
Much of the produce we buy at the supermarket has traveled 27 times as far as the produce available from local sources (so say the folks at Sustainable Table). That’s a lot of food miles, which is also a lot of energy. Not to mention the time lost between the harvest and the kitchen.
Here in Rhode Island, it’s different. Our local farmers manage to make good food happen on expensive land, despite high taxes, surrounded by the ever-encroaching subdivisions. “Farmers in that situation have to practice 'permaculture' to keep the land working, and that comes at a slightly higher cost,” says Sherri. “But the results are great, fresh, seasonal foods. Whether you are paying with cash, Fresh Bucks, food stamps/EBT, or credit card, the bonus is that your money goes right back into your community.”
After talking to Sheri, I had to wonder, can you afford not to shop at your farmers' market? Just to check what kind of premium I would have to pay, I made a comparison with my local super big-box chain store. A nice 10-ounce bag of fresh Rhode Island-raised baby spinach cost $4.00 at AS220 -- that's 40 cents an ounce. At the supermarket, a wilted 6-ounce bag of agro-farmed Californian spinach cost $3.39 -- or 56.5 cents an ounce -- over 16 cents MORE!
Doesn’t take a starving artist to tell which is the better deal.
The winter market will stay open every Saturday, noon to 3, until May 31. For more information about the coming outdoor market season, check out www.farmfresh.org.
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