Market Farming

[Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>]

Sorry for the very long post here: but I think this conversation matters. Steve, I hope you're reading these, even if you're now refraining from commenting.

On Jan 18, 2011, at 7:29 AM, waldenfarm wrote:

Maybe the bone of contention here is who you define as a "farmer." I think there are 2 sectors of food production in this country: farmers and the corporate food producer/processor complex. One strives to produce a superior product, the other to make as much profit as possible.

 

Alex McGregor

Walden Farm

SE TN

I think that's taking it too far. 

For one thing, all of us need to make a profit. 

For another, "corporate" is a term that covers a huge amount of ground: my place may be "corporate" soon, as I'm thinking of setting up an LLC. Some extremely small operations are incorporated.

For a third, there are some moderately large operations selling wholesale or primarily wholesale that are genuinely run and actually farmed by one family or a small group of family and friends, working with a specific piece or pieces of land; and many of them really do feel they're also striving both to protect that land and to keep it fertile, and to produce a superior product. The definition of "superior" may vary: I may define a "superior" tomato as one with best flavor; they may define it as one that looks and stores best. We do need to educate customers about this differences; but we need to remain aware both that not every customer wants the same thing, and that a grower with a different definition of "quality" doesn't think of themselves as producing junk, and is understandably going to resent simplified publicity that presents their produce in that fashion.

The type of extremely large operation in which everyone doing actual farm work is a lower level employee is, I think, a different sort of creature. Unlike the operation I'm trying to describe in my "for a third" paragraph, these aren't connected to any specific farmland (they may own and use quite a bit of it, but none of it is "home" and all of it is to them interchangeable with any ground that will produce the desired crop); and most or all of the people actually farming and packing are strangers, or at best distant acquaintances, to the management; as are the customers. The management of these companies is interested in soil health, in the health of those actually in the fields, and in the health of the customers, only so far as this impacts their bottom line; and often it's a very short term bottom line, at that. As someone else on this list mentioned, such businesses have no national loyalties; I'd add that they have no local loyalties, either.

But it's unfair to lump Brigette and Steve, for example, in with these people. Those who would like a monopoly over all the world's food will only be given an advantage if the rest of us quarrel with each other.

As I said in another post: the trick is to learn how to talk up our own quality without putting down the farmer at the next stall. It can also be done without putting down the farmer who sells to the grocery: by explaining the different criteria needed. At one of the markets I go to, we set up right next door to the local supermarket, and some of our market parking is actually on their land. Grocery stores, like anything else, vary. Some of the big chains are trying to co-opt the farmers' market movement by setting up fake "markets" out of their wholesale purchased produce; some more independent local stores (and, for all I know, an occasional larger chain) are supporting genuine local markets, on the grounds that bringing more customers into downtown is good for the town as a whole, and will therefore improve their business in the long run even if it means they sell fewer tomatoes. We need to encourage this kind of thinking. And we need to start by encouraging it in ourselves.

The problem I see in Steve's original post on this was that, instead of defending his type of farming against specific charges if he felt attacked, he wanted to declare the whole subject of quality as "politics" that we shouldn't be talking about on this list at all. While I very badly don't want to see this list disintegrating into party-line political discussions, random digs at particular politicians, or even relatively non-partisan discussions of political issues not directly related to farming, there's probably nothing that humans do that doesn't have some political aspect to it. We do need to be talking about quality. We do need to be educating customers. A list like this, which has farmers who vary widely in their type of operations and of markets, is an excellent place to discuss how to best do this: in part because it can give us a chance to work out how to do so without attacking one another. 

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly

Fresh-market organic produce, small scale