Farmer's Market - a force for good?
Posted by: Roy T on 11 January 2005
Considering that boroughmarket is the only one I have visited of late I consider this a fair description of a Farmer's Market.
What do others think, any good examples in the London area worth a visit?
Farmers' markets? No thanks. That's sheer snobbery
By Richard Tomkins
Published: January 11 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 11 2005 02:00
One of the oldest maxims in business is that scarcity sells. ("Buy now while stocks last!") It is just another expression of the law of supply and demand. So you have to hand it to those guys at the weekend farmers' markets that have become popular in the US, the UK and beyond. They may look like simple country folk trying to earn a few honest pennies from their back-breaking labour in the fields, but they need few lessons in how to separate urbanites from their money.
I know this because after a long and heroic resistance to the allure of the market just along the road from the Financial Times, I finally succumbed in the run-up to Christmas and decided to do some food shopping there. I had not intended to leave an hour or so later with 2kg of mini chipolata sausages, a mound of dry cured bacon and a vast ham - but how could I resist once told that the pigs from which the meat had come belonged to rare breeds? "Even rarer now!" I cackled gleefully as I staggered away with my booty.
As it turned out, the chipolatas were thoroughly nasty and the rest of the meat failed to impress. The surprise, though, was that I was surprised. If I had given the matter a moment's thought, I would have realised that there was a very good reason why rare breeds became rare: it was because people preferred other breeds. Right now, my biggest sausage nightmare is that the implied scarcity of rare pig breeds will so increase their popularity that the delicious supermarket pig becomes an endangered species and I end up next Christmas having to pay 10 times the cost of the turkey for a tray of Tesco's pork cocktail sausages.
Then again, the farmers' market phenomenon is riddled with such paradoxes. An even bigger selling point than scarcity is the fake sense of authenticity these markets convey. Admittedly, there was a time in pre-industrial history when local markets were the most effective way of bringing people and produce together, but today, supermarkets maximise economies of scale and value for money. So what could be more inauthentic than the sight of dozens of farmers erecting stalls in city centre lots and selling produce to wealthy loft-dwellers who have driven half a mile from their homes in gas-guzzling 4x4s?
And why are even mundane foodstuffs such as vegetables labelled "traditional" or "original" as if these words automatically conferred some kind of product superiority?
Everything was better in the good old days, we are encouraged to believe. Yet here lies another paradox. Once, you paid extra if you wanted only the best quality vegetables, carefully trimmed, thoroughly washed and properly packaged. Now, you pay extra if you want your vegetables authentically bruised, rotten and misshapen, covered in clods of earth, stuck on stalks or sprouting fronds and packed in flimsy paper bags that burst the moment you have handed over your money.
Perhaps the height of absurdity on my visit came when I found a stall advertising so-called heritage potatoes such as Pink Fir Apple 1850 and Ratte 1872 at about five times the price of high-quality supermarket potatoes. For heaven's sake, I muttered: sometimes a potato is just a potato. But then, at last, I realised what lay behind the rare pig breed and heritage potato syndrome: sheer snobbery.
A few years ago, in his book Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks noted how today's educated elites, renouncing conspicuous consumption, had established a new set of codes that defined what kinds of spending were acceptable. Buying big limousines and power boats was crass, but it was virtuous to practice the perfectionism of small things - for example, devoting fanatical attention to the purchase of exactly the right kind of pasta strainer, a distinctive doorknob or an ingeniously designed corkscrew.
Similarly, for the new upper class, it is now far too vulgar to be seen buying caviar and champagne. It is, however, a sign of good taste if you are prepared to spend flabbergasting amounts of money on a bag of potatoes or a lump of pigmeat. Ideally, of course, these should be cooked in an oven fired with carefully selected pieces of heritage coal lovingly hand-mined from a rare seam near a hamlet in South Wales and transported to the city by horse and cart. Yes, it costs a fortune, but you would not believe how much it enhances your food's flavour, texture and goodness.
Returning, though, to my shopping saga, there is just one more chapter. When buying my pigmeat, I was reassured to learn that the bacon had been dry cured with salt, saltpetre and brown sugar, with no artificial colour or smoke. Later that day, however, I stumbled upon a web page that said saltpetre was a nitrate, that nitrates decayed into nitrites, that nitrites combined with some food chemicals to form nitrosamines and that nitrosamines were among the most carcinogenic substances on earth.
It made me wonder. How do you trust these farmers' markets? The food, with all its supposed authenticity, may look healthy, but how do you really know? And what comeback do you have against a no-name stallholder if his products poison your family?
What we need is for someone to establish a chain of markets under a brand name that would stand as an assurance of quality and reliability. The food could be prepared with convenience in mind but scale economies and self-service would keep prices low - and for the greater comfort of shoppers, the markets could be placed inside clean, modern buildings with large car parks. They could be called super farmers' markets, or supermarkets for short. And they could have my custom any day. richard.tomkins@ft.com
What do others think, any good examples in the London area worth a visit?
Farmers' markets? No thanks. That's sheer snobbery
By Richard Tomkins
Published: January 11 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 11 2005 02:00
One of the oldest maxims in business is that scarcity sells. ("Buy now while stocks last!") It is just another expression of the law of supply and demand. So you have to hand it to those guys at the weekend farmers' markets that have become popular in the US, the UK and beyond. They may look like simple country folk trying to earn a few honest pennies from their back-breaking labour in the fields, but they need few lessons in how to separate urbanites from their money.
I know this because after a long and heroic resistance to the allure of the market just along the road from the Financial Times, I finally succumbed in the run-up to Christmas and decided to do some food shopping there. I had not intended to leave an hour or so later with 2kg of mini chipolata sausages, a mound of dry cured bacon and a vast ham - but how could I resist once told that the pigs from which the meat had come belonged to rare breeds? "Even rarer now!" I cackled gleefully as I staggered away with my booty.
As it turned out, the chipolatas were thoroughly nasty and the rest of the meat failed to impress. The surprise, though, was that I was surprised. If I had given the matter a moment's thought, I would have realised that there was a very good reason why rare breeds became rare: it was because people preferred other breeds. Right now, my biggest sausage nightmare is that the implied scarcity of rare pig breeds will so increase their popularity that the delicious supermarket pig becomes an endangered species and I end up next Christmas having to pay 10 times the cost of the turkey for a tray of Tesco's pork cocktail sausages.
Then again, the farmers' market phenomenon is riddled with such paradoxes. An even bigger selling point than scarcity is the fake sense of authenticity these markets convey. Admittedly, there was a time in pre-industrial history when local markets were the most effective way of bringing people and produce together, but today, supermarkets maximise economies of scale and value for money. So what could be more inauthentic than the sight of dozens of farmers erecting stalls in city centre lots and selling produce to wealthy loft-dwellers who have driven half a mile from their homes in gas-guzzling 4x4s?
And why are even mundane foodstuffs such as vegetables labelled "traditional" or "original" as if these words automatically conferred some kind of product superiority?
Everything was better in the good old days, we are encouraged to believe. Yet here lies another paradox. Once, you paid extra if you wanted only the best quality vegetables, carefully trimmed, thoroughly washed and properly packaged. Now, you pay extra if you want your vegetables authentically bruised, rotten and misshapen, covered in clods of earth, stuck on stalks or sprouting fronds and packed in flimsy paper bags that burst the moment you have handed over your money.
Perhaps the height of absurdity on my visit came when I found a stall advertising so-called heritage potatoes such as Pink Fir Apple 1850 and Ratte 1872 at about five times the price of high-quality supermarket potatoes. For heaven's sake, I muttered: sometimes a potato is just a potato. But then, at last, I realised what lay behind the rare pig breed and heritage potato syndrome: sheer snobbery.
A few years ago, in his book Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks noted how today's educated elites, renouncing conspicuous consumption, had established a new set of codes that defined what kinds of spending were acceptable. Buying big limousines and power boats was crass, but it was virtuous to practice the perfectionism of small things - for example, devoting fanatical attention to the purchase of exactly the right kind of pasta strainer, a distinctive doorknob or an ingeniously designed corkscrew.
Similarly, for the new upper class, it is now far too vulgar to be seen buying caviar and champagne. It is, however, a sign of good taste if you are prepared to spend flabbergasting amounts of money on a bag of potatoes or a lump of pigmeat. Ideally, of course, these should be cooked in an oven fired with carefully selected pieces of heritage coal lovingly hand-mined from a rare seam near a hamlet in South Wales and transported to the city by horse and cart. Yes, it costs a fortune, but you would not believe how much it enhances your food's flavour, texture and goodness.
Returning, though, to my shopping saga, there is just one more chapter. When buying my pigmeat, I was reassured to learn that the bacon had been dry cured with salt, saltpetre and brown sugar, with no artificial colour or smoke. Later that day, however, I stumbled upon a web page that said saltpetre was a nitrate, that nitrates decayed into nitrites, that nitrites combined with some food chemicals to form nitrosamines and that nitrosamines were among the most carcinogenic substances on earth.
It made me wonder. How do you trust these farmers' markets? The food, with all its supposed authenticity, may look healthy, but how do you really know? And what comeback do you have against a no-name stallholder if his products poison your family?
What we need is for someone to establish a chain of markets under a brand name that would stand as an assurance of quality and reliability. The food could be prepared with convenience in mind but scale economies and self-service would keep prices low - and for the greater comfort of shoppers, the markets could be placed inside clean, modern buildings with large car parks. They could be called super farmers' markets, or supermarkets for short. And they could have my custom any day. richard.tomkins@ft.com