My business has launched a new promotion at our farmers' market booths: we're offering half off any menu item to folks who are unemployed. We're not asking for proof; all you have to do is ask.
We've been pleased with the response. At most markets we've had two or three people taking advantage of the offer, but at Lake City the number was closer to ten. This made sense because our sales at Lake City have been down more dramatically than at any other market.
I'm hoping to give some unemployed folks a reason to go to the farmers' market. We seem to be caught in a conundrum where so many people are short on cash because the current economic model is unsustainable, yet the alternative--for better or for worse--often asks us to spend extra.
It's true that you can find plenty of fairly priced food at the farmers' market (including my own products) if you know where to look. There are also a variety of food stamp benefits that can be used at market stalls. And a number of studies recently have found that produce at local markets is actually cheaper on average than items of comparable quality at neighborhood groceries. But if you have little or no money to spare you'll undoubtedly find yourself making difficult choices during a market outing.
Personally I think that the short-term solution, the best way to navigate the current economic and culinary climate, is for us to make peace with the idea of a hybrid, transitional food system. It's too expensive and time consuming for most of us to fuss over every ingredient in every food that we put into our bodies. At the same time it's very important for every one of us to be thinking about what we're eating and why. We all have our own biases and emphases, and we all choose our own particular lines to draw (or not.)
Perhaps a special discount for unemployed folks is a roundabout way of communicating this message. It's not a sexy message, or the kind of message that inspires evangelism. But I hope some elements of it will gradually filter out and be heard.
I'm always excited to see a new book about the role of food in history. It's a fertile and fascinating topic that has been largely unexplored until relatively recently.
There are so many ways to approach this subject, so many insights and stories waiting to be woven together. Tom Standage's "An Edible History of Humanity" did, in fact, introduce me to some episodes that I haven't seen addressed in any other history of humans and food, such as the role that food provisioning has played in different wars, and the devastating famines in the Soviet Union and China during the mid twentieth century, brought about largely by the respective governments' policies aimed at convincing the rest of the world that they actually had a surplus of grain.
But Standage devotes a considerable amount of space to praising the "green revolution," the development and widespread use of nitrogen-based fertilizer and the use of hybrid seed varieties that have dramatically increased agricultural productivity during the past century, while relying disproportionately on nonrenewable energy sources and wrecking longstanding traditions in many parts of the world.
He makes the fascinating point that industrialization has almost always followed on the heels of a period of accelerated agricultural activity: in order to develop an economy where most people work at endeavors other than farming, a society first needs to figure out a way to feed more bodies with fewer people actually working the land.
Although he acknowledges that there have been drawbacks to the industrial agricultural practices that have gone hand in hand with modernization, and he assures the reader that organic agriculture will have to play a role in the next green revolution, his biases are clear simply by virtue of the amount of space he devotes to marvelling at the amazing productivity of modern agricultural technology. As someone who questions the virtues of unfettered industrialization, I was less than convinced, though I still thought it was a pretty good read.
Yesterday I worked at the Wallingford Farmers' Market for the first time ever because Adam, the guy who usually mans my booth there, asked for the day off. He hardly ever asks for time off and I happened to have been able to cover the shift, so I did.
Business was just fine-not off the charts, but it's been a very slow couple of weeks so it was encouraging to be at a relatively small market and see steady traffic.
I'd had a dream the night before that I'd gone to see Richard Thompson, a musician who I adore, only it wasn't him performing but some other guy who did reasonably competent versions of his songs, but it just wasn't the same. I figured the dream was my way of working out some of my anxiety about whether the quality of my food suffers when I'm not at the markets personally. People do come up to me sometimes and say, "It's not the same when you're not there," but I can't be everywhere.
But as soon as I pulled up to my booth at Wallingford yesterday folks started asking, "Where's Adam?"
