Comments on: Wiki Wednesday: Farmer’s Markets

By: Not the original AT

Not the original AT — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:55:11 +0000

A quick google search provided this listing of most farmers markets in LA County.
http://www.farmernet.com/events/cfms

By: Zane Selvans

Zane Selvans — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:15:13 +0000

The prices really depend on what farmer’s market you go to. There are 2 in Pasadena. An expensive yuppie market on Saturday, and a cheap brown people’s market on Tuesday. The difference in price is often a factor of 2 or 3. But even the cheap markets are still much more expensive than the small local ethnic grocery stores that buy cosmetically imperfect produce from the wholesale farmer’s market downtown. I shopped at the farmer’s markets for a few months, and then had occasion to visit my little local grocery (Lake Produce, in Pasadena http://is.gd/b6mw ), and just couldn’t go back to the Farmer’s Markets afterward. It’s literally one quarter the price of going to Ralph’s or Vons for produce – nevermind comparing it to the Farmer’s market or Whole Foods. Additionally, most of the produce there is local, because, well, because we live in LA, and there’s a ton of produce grown in the San Joaquin Valley, and out in the desert.

Regarding the carbon footprint of food, the vast majority of the carbon that’s put out by conventionally grown food is NOT put out by its transportation to your plate. Only about 10% of it comes from transportation, and much of that is not moving it from its place of production to where you eat it. That’s not to say there isn’t a huge amount of CO2 being emitted by conventional agriculture – but most of it is in the production of pesticides, fertilizers, and the fuel required to run the agricultural machinery. See this paper:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es702969f

If you don’t have access and want to read it, let me know. I hate the academic firewalls.

By: browne

browne — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:01:22 +0000

I was at the Watts Christmas Parade and what I heard from the people there was this, “Don’t waste your money there (speaking of the Farmer’s Market going on next to the parade) the food is too expensive.”

So I don’t know about the Farmer’s Market solutions, I heard over and over again from those who don’t have money that Farmer’s Markets were too expensive.

Keep this is mind, many of the poor are on EBT aka food stamps and while Farmer’s Markets take food stamps so does the 99 cent store. If you have a family of four the MAX allotment is about 548 per month, but most people get about $89 dollars per family member so think how much fresh food costs. Think about getting access to money once a month are you going to buy fresh food or are you going to go to th 99cent store and stock up on crap that doesn’t rot. Also lots of people with no money don’t have large fridges, many of them don’t even have stoves they have a microwave, so you got little kiddies that you need to feed everyday or yourself.

I was a community health organizer and my job was to get poor women of color to eat more healtful, go to farmers markets shun the fastfood, when I first began working I was really confused at why they ate so poorly. I was confused until I quickly leaned that cheap crap food is way doable for the non affluent and what they need is money not education on eating health.

Locally grown food sadly for the average person, especially one in the midst of La Crisis is not going to be the answer.

Browne