Currently browsing posts about: farmers markets

USDA has proclaimed August 4 – 10 as National Farmers Market Week.  I love farmers markets and I’m glad USDA is trying to promote them.

USDA publishes a directory of US farmers markets—7,033 listings.

It also lists

• Agrotourism sites (12,763)
• CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture (1,011)
• Food hubs (230)
• On-farm markets 1,937)

Farmers markets have a long history in the U.S.  The National Agricultural Library has a report on them published in 1948.

Its got all kinds of interesting information.

Here’s the most recent information I can find on growth in numbers.

This is progress.  Farmers markets are well worth support.

The Farmers Market Coalition provides resources and toolkits.

It also makes clear why they deserve support.  Famers markets:

• Preserve farmland
• Stimulate local economies
• Increase access to nutritious food
• Support healthy communtiies
• Promote sustainability

Besides, it’s fun to know your farmer, know your food.

The USDA’s Economic Research Service was damaged serriously when the Trump Administration moved its offices out of Washington DC to Kansas, and it is taking some time to recover.

It’s still publishing what it calls Charts of Note.

These are on all kinds of topics dealing with farm production and food consumption.  Here are a couple of examples I found particularly interesting.

Here’s the first:

This one shows that small and medium size farms make money selling direct to consumers at farmers’ markets and via Community Supported Agriculture, but the largest farms benefit most from these opportunities.  Restaurants and grocery stores don’t source much from smaller farms and neither do regional distributors.

The challenge for small and medium size farms is to find more and better distribution channels.\

And here’s the second:

I picked this one because I like the design and because this watermelon has seeds.  You can hardly buy a watermelon with seeds anymore.

I’ve been convinced that seedless watermelons don’t taste as good as the ones with seeds.  This year, I bought some seeds from old-fashioned watermelon and planted them in my place in Ithaca, New York.   They are now ripe, and edible.  But alas: I don’t think they taste any better than the ones without seeds.

Next year, we plant seedless.

One big question: how do you get create seeds for seedless watermelons?   This, I had to look up.

Seedless melons are referred to as triploid melons while ordinary seeded watermelons are called diploid melons, meaning, that a typical watermelon has 22 chromosomes (diploid) while a seedless watermelon has 33 chromosomes (triploid). To produce a seedless watermelon, a chemical process is used to double the number of chromosomes. So, 22 chromosomes are doubled to 44, called a tetraploid. Then, the pollen from a diploid is placed on the female flower of the plant with 44 chromosomes. The resulting seed has 33 chromosomes, a triploid or seedless watermelon. The seedless watermelon is sterile. The plant will bear fruit with translucent, nonviable seeds or “eggs.”

Aren’t you glad I asked?

************

Coming soon!  My memoir coming out in October.

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

Not many restaurants will be able to survive Coronavirus, and this is a personal, social, and national tragedy.

I’m worried about farmers’ markets too.

Researchers say that the cost of Coronavirus to farm-to-consumer programs could go well into the billions.  I believe it.

Now is the time to support your local farmers.

California has ruled farmers’ markets essential to local economies.

Now is the time to do what you can to keep them open and viable, even with the need for social distancing.  Use home delivery or curbside pick up if you have to.

Even more, join the Farmers Market Coalition campaign for congressional support.

Is farmers’ market produce safe to eat?  Yes (with some caveats), as I discussed on Monday.

Helen Tangires.  Movable Markets: Food Wholesaling in the Twentieth-Century City.  Johns Hopkins Press, 2019. 

Why did Paris destroy Les Halles?  Why did New York City move the Fulton Fish Market to the Bronx?  People who remember these places still mourn their loss. 

This book explains why such moves were inevitable.  They happened as a result of concerns about sanitation and crowding, the introduction of trucks, the need for parking, and the high cost of inner city real estate, and that’s just for starters.

I did a blurb for this one:

In investigating the social, economic, and political forces behind the removal of beloved city food markets—Les Halles in Paris, New York’s Washington Market, for example—to more efficient but far less colorful out-of-town locations, Helen Tangires has given us a refreshingly new take on the history of twentieth-century food systems.

I’m in Israel this week at a meeting on Sustainable Food Systems* along with some basic food tourism.

The trip started with a visit to the small-but-impressive farmers’ market at the Port of Tel Aviv.

The market is under umbrellas to protect people, sprouts, and other vegetables from the intense Mediterranean sun (it’s hot here).  

The market is in two sections, separated by an indoor section with stalls for an amazing array of (mostly) locally produced artisanal food products.

And here’s Shir Halpern who developed this market, runs others, and is doing everything possible to encourage young farmers.

This is a great way to start any visit to a new country.

*Just for fun, here’s my interview in today’s Haaretz—-in Hebrew.   And here’s an English translation (thanks to Hemi Weingarten of Fooducate)

Thanks to Mark Douglas of Culinate.com for sending me his site’s new interactive map of farmers’ markets in the United States.  I have no idea how his group acquired this information but you can type in your community and up pops a list of local markets with maps to find them.  I tried Ithaca, New York, and up popped the terrific local institution right there on the Cayuga inlet.