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market-farming - RE: [Market-farming] Re:Food quality

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  • From: Matt Cheselka <cheselka AT freestateproject.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] Re:Food quality
  • Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 20:23:13 -0600 (CST)

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004, Marie Kamphefner wrote:

> Regards to the list:
>
> This is a crime! How did our system get so screwed up? How can we
> change things?
>
> <snip>
> We have thousands of acres of peaches in the county yet the supermarkets
> will be selling "Fresh California Peaches" when our local crop is in
> season...

I honestly think there's nothing we can or should do. It's futile to
try to compete with that kind of insanity. Supermarkets have contracts
with commercial/industrial growers and that relationship probably isn't
going to change for a while. Look how long it took for supermarket to
start including "organic" stuff? 30-40 (or more!) years??? All we can do
is keep doin' what we're doin'. If that means taking off-farm jobs to
keep the peach tress a-growin', I'd be more than willing to do it! This
is exactly what I'm doing with my veggie growing -- I'll do *anything*
necessary to keep 'em growin'!

I'm such a strong believer in human nature that I'm betting that there is
*at least* a moderately large population of USA citizens/residents that
would want a local peach instead of an imported (from Calif or elsewhere)
one. In addition, we can do our little part and maximize what we buy from
local growers.

Just to underline this, I've had my one-man, one-sign, one-table
'Vegetables' stand up and running for only two weeks (I'll put up a
picture sometime so you can all laugh at my pitiful display), and people
are calling me on the phone to make sure I'm going to be there next week
and making sure I bring certain things for them. I'm *so* psyched!!!
Anyhow, this tells me that even in a dinky little town (where I live) of
4,000 (half are kids), there's huge demand for this stuff. Now -- chant
with me: "We can do it! We can do it! We can do it!".

Going slightly mad,

Matt Cheselka
Cosmic Lettuce





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