Screw National Farmers’ Market Week — Part I

This week has been declared National Farmers’ Market Week. Well, not for me. I’m a bit miffed at the farmers in my community–organic farmers in particular–and am boycotting the market. I’ve been writing this blog post for several days and it keeps growing. I’m going to have to break it up into manageable chunks. So this week will be devoted to bitching about the farmers’ market scam.

I’m all for growing nature-designed food with natural inputs and healthy, bacteria-rich soil, and I’m behind supporting local businesses and farmers. When it comes to agriculture, I vote with my dollar, and I do whatever I can to make sure Monsanto doesn’t come onto my property. But being recently unemployed and watching my meager savings pour out of my wallet like blood from an open gunshot wound, I’ve had to take a hard look at food prices.

Almost all the food I’ve bought the past nine or ten years has been organic, and I’ve encouraged others to support organic and sustainable agriculture. Now that I’m both unemployed and eating at least fifty percent raw produce, I realize how naive I’ve been. Buying organic is not financially feasible for a large portion of the population. It’s an upper-middle class luxury and a lower class impossibility.

What Determines Retail Food Prices?

In business you’ve got your wholesaler who sells to the middleman who handles the logistics, and then the middleman sells to the retailer who opens a store for a set block of hours. The price set by the retailer takes into consideration cost of goods and freight, rent or mortage, payroll and taxes, insurance, utilities, fixtures, repairs, and advertising, among other things. When you pay $2.99 a pound for peaches, that’s what you’re paying for.

When you go to the farmers’ market, you go at their convenience as they dictate the hours of operation. If yours is situated downtown like mine, you get to pay for street parking or park in the free parking lot a couple blocks away. (I paid 75 cents to park last time and didn’t get to my car quick enough resulting in a $12 ticket.) You weave your way through crowds of slowly moving people and jostle others to get at the peaches. The lines are long, and you have to carry your purchases around in bags because there are no carts and little room for them. It’s the farmers’ market experience whose novelty makes it all worth while.

The farmer has to pay a small fee to sell at the market. He drives the produce himself, sets up his stand, or maybe he has some part-time employees run the stand. But there’s no rent, utilities, insurance, advertising. In fact, he can advertise his farm and his Community Supported Agriculture program for free! The farmer has an inexpensive outlet for his product that requires little risk and great benefit. His expenses are far less than the retail seller.

My friend Polly went to a farmers’ market recently and asked a vendor, “How much is your sourdough bread.” He answered, “$4.50.” She replied, “But that’s more than it costs at the store. I thought the whole point of coming to the farmers’ market was to cut out the middleman and buy directly from the source.” The vendor became defensive and said, “This bread is fresh from the baker this morning.” Pardon me? Doesn’t Whole Foods get its bread fresh every morning?

Hey, he’s selling in Los Gatos, an upscale, ritzy town for successful silicon valley entrepreneurs and CEOs. Median value for a home in Los Gatos as of 2005? $1.2 million. Median family income? It’s either $94,000 or $150,000, depending on which website you believe. (Whoops. Updating to say this was at the Cupertino Farmers’ Market where the median home value is only $1.1 million.) So why not shoot for the stars? What’s $4.50 to these folks? Their servant probably does the grocery shopping.

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Sample recent home sales in LOS GATOS, CA (zip code 95030) (this is the upper end of the crust):

144 WHITNEY AVE: $1,575,000 on 2008-07-03
99 FOSTER RD: $3,050,000 on 2008-07-02
16940 SHELDON RD: $1,425,000 on 2008-06-26
17385 HIGH ST: $2,345,000 on 2008-06-24
15460 PALOS VERDES DR: $1,825,000 on 2008-06-24
65 WHITNEY AVE: $2,200,000 on 2008-06-22
100 HOLLYWOOD AVE: $2,350,000 on 2008-06-20
225 TAIT AVE: $1,600,000 on 2008-06-13 (MULTI-FAMILY (2 – 4))
104 FANCHER CT: $1,750,000 on 2008-06-11
95 CHURCH ST 2207: $858,000 on 2008-06-11 (COOP OR CONDO)
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How Far Does Your Dollar Go?

I figure my dollar supports a whole lot more people when I shop at my favorite organic store, so I went there yesterday. An employee was wondering why I was writing down a bunch of prices. When I explained my position and that I was going to blog on this issue, she told me she was at the farmers’ market on Saturday. She lowered her head and said in a hushed voice, “I saw peaches for $4.50 a pound, and they were getting it because people wanted peaches.”

A man overheard our conversation and told me he had boycotted the farmers’ market last year because of the price gouging. I didn’t boycott last year. I just walked away from a vendor with my bag of produce in a semi-stupor thinking, “My, that sure seemed like a lot of money.”

If this is too much of a downer, you can visit The Farmers’ Market Report where people appear to be thrilled with their markets.

Continue to Part II.