The Farmers Market Challenge

Julie Flynn of the On Food Stamps blog was kind enough to send in this guest editorial. Enjoy!

For the past three weeks I have been living on a $31 per week food budget as a vegan in an effort to explore the challenges low income Americans face in the quest for healthful, sustainable, and affordable food. I have found that the only real source of organic or local produce in the low-income neighborhoods of Los Angeles is the Farmer’s Markets.

When I began this project, I was glad to see that there were indeed Farmer’s Markets in neighborhoods like Watts and South Central, even if the markets were relatively small. I was even happier to see that these Farmer’s Markets had large signs announcing that they gladly accepted EBT/Food Stamp benefits. (I am only shopping at places that accept food stamps.) I had some real success acquiring local, pesticide free produce within my budget at these Farmer’s Markets, but it was by no means a perfect shopping experience.

As this month long project has progressed, I have actually found that going to Farmer’s Markets for my food isn’t all that easy, and it can actually be a pain. Apparently, I am not alone.

According to the California Association of Foodbanks and the California Department of Social Services, the percentage of all food benefits spent at farmers’ markets in California in 2008 was 0.0197%. The percentage of benefits spent at Farmer’s Markets for the first four months of 2009 is 0.0227%.

If these markets are centrally located in low-income neighborhoods, and they accept food stamps, why isn’t anyone going to them?

As someone who is living on a very tight food budget, I can tell you that the way our food system is set up, shopping at a Farmer’s Market simply isn’t worth it for me.

Sure, there are some major benefits to shopping at Farmer’s Markets. I am supporting local farmers, and decreasing my carbon footprint by buying locally grown produce. I can actually find pesticide free and organic food, which is nearly impossible to find at chain discount grocery stores. Farmer’s Markets offer me a more pleasant sensory experience- I am trying free samples, smelling fresh fruits, and talking to farmers about their crops instead of pushing a cart down an aisle lit with florescent lights. If I buy food in season the price aren’t even necessarily much higher than at the grocery stores.

It seems like shopping at a Farmer’s Market would be a great option considering all of those benefits, but I can tell you that a number of challenges outweigh the benefits when you are trying to live on $31 per week.

First of all, when your food budget is that tight, buying local and organic produce is really not much of a priority. I am much more concerned with having enough food to fill my belly for 7 days than I am about reducing my carbon footprint. Supporting my local farmer is all well and good, but when I’m anxious about having enough money to feed myself, that level of social consciousness becomes a luxury. Especially if my local farmer charges me $1 more per pound for carrots that the 99-Cents-Only store does, which is sometimes the case.

While buying pesticide free, sustainable food was one of my major goals this month, I am finding that I wind up with less organic produce in my fridge than I’d hoped I would. The fact is that even though I know pesticides will probably give me cancer some day, the health consequences of buying genetically altered, chemical laden produce seem so vague and far away when I am standing in the super market aisle. I am able to afford some of my favorite exotic vegetables if I buy them at my local ethnic market. While I worry that these items are not organic, my desire to eat what I want to eat and my need to stay within my budget tend to win out week after week.

Unfortunately, when there are so many other sources of anxiety associated with my ability to access good food, “organic” tends to fall to the bottom of the list. I imagine that if I were a single mom in Watts living on food stamps it would be even lower. I’d be much more worried about letting my kids play outside in a neighborhood plagued by gang violence than I would be about giving them a carrot with some pesticides on it.

Convenience is also a major issue, and it extends beyond the physical location of the market. I’ve missed several markets because they are only open for a few hours, one day per week. Even if that day is on a weekend when I am off of work, that Saturday from 8am-12noon time window is pretty slim compared to a grocery store that is open 7am-9pm every day of the week.

Like most people that are working full time, I have a lot of things I want to get done on a weekend day, and I might even want to relax or spend time with friends or family. Getting up early on one of my few precious sleep-in days is not always desirable, and I find it frustrating that I have to plan my entire day and weekend to-do list around buying food.

In addition, Farmer’s Markets only sell some of the food items I need. I am not finding rice, or lentils, or beans, or any of the other staples that stretch my $31 for 21 meals. If I go to a Farmer’s Market for my weekly produce I’ll have to make two shopping trips that week, at least. $31 per week doesn’t afford me much in the way of “convenient” food –I am usually cooking meals from scratch and in bulk, and I already devote a crazy amount of time to preparing my cheap, healthy meals. Adding more shopping trips to my load is really the last thing I want to do.

I find Farmer’s Markets relatively inconvenient, and I only work one job and have no children to take care of. If I had to balance a family and several jobs, I can’t imagine I’d ever make there for my produce.

I have found that the sensory enjoyment of a Farmer’s Market is greatly diminished when my budget is so restricted. The last time I was at a Farmer’s Market I tasted the most divine juicy plums you can imagine. Did I buy them? Of course not. I could only afford cabbage and carrots. All of a sudden the free samples become more of a tease when you have so little money to spend. Instead of increasing my enjoyment of the market, the sights, smells, and tastes tend to remind me of my limited buying power and leave me frustrated.

At the beginning of this project, I thought Farmer’s Markets were going to be the key to my quest for nutritious, sustainable, and affordable food. Three weeks into it I can say that while bringing farmer’s markets into low-income neighborhoods and insuring that they accept food stamps is a great step, when I am pressed for time and money it is hard to prioritize the sustainability of my food.

In the end, price and nutritional content win out over sustainability.

This got me thinking about how else we might be able to insure that every American, regardless of their income, has access to healthy and sustainable food. Sustainably grown fruits and vegetables have to be much easier to access, or they won’t be bought. If Farmer’s Markets aren’t doing it, what would?

Food access is a complicated issue for which there is no single golden solution. But, I can name several examples where community gardens have come pretty close. A recent documentary film called The Garden tells the story of what was once the largest community farm in the United States. For nearly 15 years, low-income residents in one of Los Angeles’s most blighted neighborhoods cultivated a 14 acre farm which yielded not just local, sustainable food but also community strength. Harlem and the East Village are still peppered with thriving community gardens which residents started in the 1970s when Manhattan’s crime rate was through the roof and burned out building lots were being used for drug deals.

Rather than let their neighborhoods slip further into devastation, residents organized, tilled the land, and eventually started turning things around.

While the presence of Farmer’s Markets in low-income neighborhoods is a good sign, I would like to see city leaders in America take it a little further and prioritize sustainable, humane urban planning that includes creative solutions for making our cities greener, our bodies healthier, and our food system less broken.

In LA, where everything is quite spread out, it might be an urban farm. In Manhattan, a smattering of tiny plots and rooftop gardens. In Detroit, the organization Urban Farming has shown us that we can grow food vertically - off the walls of our buildings – to combat food insecurity in low-income neighborhoods. I’m glad that there is a Farmer’s Market in Watts that accepts food stamp benefits, but I’d rather have a garden plot on my roof or in my neighborhood.

I’ll tell you, a few square feet of soil with some pesticide free vegetables growing in the summer sun would sure make my $31 per week go a lot farther.

(Photo credit: Natalie Maynor on Flickr.)