The Market Is Open

The market is open for commerce!

For a few days last week, I had the opportunity to visit some friends of mine who help manage two working farms. On Thursday, my kids and I helped harvest local restaurant orders of sugar snap peas, kale, collards, spinach and salad mixes. We were harvesting the produce in an urban plot in the middle of a dense intersection of western civilization. The farm grew food in the midst of a cacophony of people from diverse ethnic origins, diverse business interests, and diverse dreams. We worked with a few other volunteers as the farm was an income generating project for a recovery house. We only worked for two hours. Veggies were weighed, bagged, packed onto bike trailers and sent off to high-end restaurants. After a solid mornings work with numerous volunteers, the total invoices amounted to only $149.

The intersection that bustled outside the urban farm serves as a useful symbol for a larger chaotic intersection that local growers must navigate every week. After the proverbial carrot seed is cultivated, tended, and weeded, time gathers the work into produce. The carrot is pulled from the ground, washed, and bundled. This whole process involves a very different kind of economy from the bustling intersection outside the cultivated fields. Our local growers not only have to compete with the lobbying agroindustrial system, but they also face the mechanized food systems embodied in cheap processed foods. Larger corporate and national powers help subsidize industrial food until our food culture is orphaned along the curbside. In the midst of such a cacophonous intersection, how do our local growers subsidize a different food culture? What happens to the proverbial local carrot when it enters an economy foreign to the farm and field? Some argue, the demand of the consumer will tip the scales back to local, organic food. Yes, yes, this is true. But, I don’t think we can simply fall back on the industrial economic system founded solely on supply and demand. Rather, local consumers must partner with local growers to cultivate an economy that protects and preserves local food AND living wages. Our economic system is skewed to reward other types of labor, yet every form of labor in our society is dependent on the cultivation of food. Whether our growers come to market by truck or bicycle, local consumers must find ways to revalue their labor and restore an economy based upon the gift of food.

As you order your food this week or crunch a forkful of salad, consider the combination of time, attention and labor that went into that mouthful. Let’s raise a hearty salutation to our growers, but let’s also raise a new local, balanced economy that is just.

I am still building my volunteer base for Saturday market. Saturday volunteers are divided into two shifts – early bird (from 8:00 to 10:30) and pick up (from 10:00 to 12:30). Volunteers help inventory and set-up before pick-up begins and then help members pick up their orders by collecting the products they ordered for them. Volunteer opportunities are also available at the check-out table. As a volunteer, you get $5.00 credit that you can use towards membership or your order payment each time you volunteer. If you are interested in volunteering, send me an email, and I will put you on our volunteer email list: littlerockfoodclub@gmail.com . We wouldn’t be able to have Food Club without volunteers, so THANK YOU!

Cheers,

Kyle Holton
Market & Program Manager