Introducing Farmers’ Markets

Market-days are a special kind of joy for all involved, and the market is a real event whether it is
daily, weekly or every month. A Farmers’ Market is an excellent way to shop. You buy direct from a
farmer/producer, and know exactly where your produce comes from, how it was produced, and by whom. Most
traders are either the farmer themselves or someone who works on the farm, and will be able to answer
any questions you may have regarding what they sell. Stallholders will know what they are selling
intimately, and you will know what you are buying without having to resort to just reading a label.
I think there should be vastly more Farmers’ markets in this country. Most people though are more
familiar with supermarkets. I feel supermarkets are great, especially for buying out of season produce,
exotic foods we cannot grow here, and for the ease of use of the whole system. There are a huge number
of parking spaces at large supermarkets, and the layout of the aisles and the ease of check-out/paying –
and out the door to the car, cannot be beaten for efficiency. There is another way though – many in fact;
and next i will list the benefits of a good farmers’ Market, the likes of which we had at Parson’s Green.

Reasons for using a good Farmers’ Market:

+Ethical

Many traders are organic and so Livestock is reared humanely, grass fed, allowed to live in family
groups all their lives – not separated from parents at a young age, and not raised in, intensive,
factory style conditions. Poultry too, will live in good conditions, being free to go outside, and
not caged, and fed a much more natural diet. Fish will be caught without the use of netting practices
that damage the marine environment, and that allow juvenile fish to escape, and so reproduce, rather
than the current ‘overfishing- stock collapse-and move on to new waters’, of modern industrial fishing
fleets. Also fruit and vegetables will be grown, without the use of excessive pesticides, which have
killed off so many native pollinating insects- especially bees.

+Quality

Fruit and vegetables should be grown for the quality, and not graded purely on look and shape, but the
‘taste’. Having to travel a fraction of the distance, from harvest to point of sale, all produce will
be fresher, naturally ripened, and not frozen or otherwise treated for the journey.

(I know a man who worked for an organic fruit and vegetable farm, and for all his life had been
allergic to apples. He was amazed to discover he could eat the apples he sold from his market stall,
grown in East Sussex, and also the apples from my own farm from Kent. He still could not eat apples
from a supermarket. I cannot help think pesticides, or preservatives of some kind were to blame. Not
a very scientific hypothesis – but still there must be something good to be said about our apples,
i know they certainly taste much better than those which travel massive distances from farm to table. )

Meat and poultry will be healthier from leading a natural ‘stress free’ life, and eating a much
healthier diet. Bread will be made in traditional ways, unlike the industrial processes used in much
modern bread-making, and with no preservatives, and the highest quality natural ingredients. Traders
at farmers’ markets are artisans who pride themselves on the quality of their produce, and are proud
to share how they work. We should all know the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the things we put in our shopping
baskets. On market-day, you can find out exactly, ‘what’ you are buying, and ‘how’ it was produced,
before you buy.

Quality of life is worth mentioning: as-well as eating food that is full of nutrition, buying at a
Farmers’ market means you buy what is ‘in season’. Eating a more seasonal diet really does improve
the quality of our lives, and makes one feel more in tune with the natural world we actually live
in. I believe in the health benefits of keeping closer to the rhythms of the seasons, which i’m sure
boost our immune systems against the ills of the spring and autumn seasonal shifts.

(A Spanish lady once told me, after buying a bag of the first nettle tips of the Spring from my stall:
“In Spain it is a tradition that we eat nettles, ten times in the Spring, to help detox our bodies from
the traditional Winter diet – and to boost the immune system as we go from one season to another”. I
am sure in the British Isles we would have had a similar tradition, that is now lost to most of
us here.)

+Variety

Where do i start? I think this is one of the most compelling reasons to shop at a farmers’
market. Supermarkets and good greengrocers, ‘can’ sell very good quality produce, but for variety a
good farmers’ market cannot be beaten.

Vegetables:- Let us use the humble tomato as an example – i know it’s technically a fruit, but we
all think of them as veg: On one good farmers’ stall, you could have ‘well’ over a dozen different
types of tomato, my own farm regularly grows around twenty different varieties. There are an amazing
variety of vegetables at a market throughout the season, that you will rarely see in a supermarket. As
the season unfolds, there is wild garlic leaves, sorrel, mustard leaves, a massive amount of salads,
and mixed salad/herb combinations, many types of cucumber and gherkin, many types of courgette like
patty pan, and numerous types of aubergine – not just the large ‘black pearl’ varieties. Beetroot is
sold in bunches, with the fresh leaves(beet greens), black radish varieties also sold whole with the
leaves, and many more things sold bunched and whole/intact. Many types of edible flowers, like borage,
courgette flowers, nasturtians, and in the autumn the choice of squash and pumpkin is massive. For
every class of vegetable seen in a shop, there will be at the least, ‘double’ the choice at a market.

The same goes for fruit. At Parson’s Green, we had two farmer’s selling apples from their own orchards,
one farmer from Essex, and one, my own, from Kent. Every year my own farm would grow around thirty
different varieties of apple, and the other farmer would probably have grown a similar variety,
or more. Both apple sellers sold heritage varieties of apples that were once common in the UK, that
the older generation still know of, but that are hardly ever seen in the supermarkets, which sell us
maybe six or seven varieties ‘of the same apple’ all year round. Where are the very first apples of the
season in late July/early August, like the ‘Discovery’ that herald the beginning of the apple harvest,
to the mid season ‘Worcester’ on through to the golden brown ‘Russet’ apples in September. Aswell
as the traditional varieties hardly seen in the shops, there are hundreds of new varieties of modern
apples that are sold at markets- that deserve to be tried. Taking my farm as an example again, and we
were one among many similar at our market, we grew and sold:- gooseberries, blackcurrents, white and
red currents, jostaberries, raspberries, strawberries, pineberries, blueberries, cherries, damsons,
greenguages, many varietes of plums, many varieties of apples and pears, quinces, and medlars. All
from one market stall/one small farm.

Meat is sold in a vast selection of cuts, at a market. The selection of animal and type of cut is
better than you would find in, even a good traditional butchers shop. Also many farmers, like those
at our old market, are sometimes champions of rare-breed livestock, that are hard to find elsewhere.

Fish and seafood are sold by the people who catch it. Each catch may contain different species each
week. We are an island nation that is surrounded by an amazing variety of sea-life, that unfortunately
most of us know very little about. In theory the UK should have seafood cuisine, and culture to envy
the world, and a quick chat with someone who knows anything about the abundant species in our waters
may make us all rethink, what we eat, most of which are over exploited species. Why not come and see
the variety of catch of small day-boats, who trade at farmers’ markets, every week, and get advice
from the people who catch and sell it?

+Sustainability

For quite some time now, i think it has been common knowledge that we ‘moderns’, live and expect to
live – a life that is totally unsustainable. The issues like climate change, and mass extinction
through habitat loss and pollution, may seem like they are things to be left to the experts, and for,
‘behind closed doors’ government committees, but we as individuals can tip the balance in favour of
real positive change, for our generation – the next – and for the future of humanity. We need to,
preserve our soils, our oceans, and the air we breath; we need to consume less, throw away less, and
reach that happy balance of living that will ‘sustain’ future generations on this wonderful planet
indefinately.

Farmers’ Markets are part of the everyday solutions, to the challenges of becoming a sustainable

culture, that we can all get involved with now. So let us look at how a Farmer’s market can help,’from the
(lowest) ground up’, starting in the rivers, seas and oceans, the domain of fish.

++At Sea

All life came from the sea, and soon all life will be gone from the sea, if we are not careful.
The seas are being polluted by rubbish, especially plastics, sewage, and chemicals from heavy industry,
agricultural run-off from fields into rivers, and destructive fishing practices. Around the world,
marine environments are being destroyed by trawling the sea floors for fish, and fish populations are
collapsing from overfishing, by international fishing fleets – far far from their home waters. The impact
on local fishing communities – who rely on already over-exploited fishing grounds – from international
fleets, is also very worrying, especially in developing countries where many local populations rely
on their home waters for food, and there is no alternative income for fishing communities.

++Farmers’ Markets, Fish and Fishing

The fish sold at farmers’ markets, are usually caught by, ‘day-boats’, small fishing boats, who
go out to catch what they can, and return to harbour, just as countless generations before them
did, even if they have to sometimes travel further out to sea than in the past, due to declining
fish stocks. It is in their interests to protect the populations of fish that they make their living
from. This is in sharp contrast to modern, large fishing vessels, that may travel vast distances from
their home ports to fish, and where the only incentive is to catch as much as possible and move on to
better fishing grounds, to pay for the great expenses involved. Well managed local fishing fleets,
who have the knowledge of their own fishing grounds, and the incentives to fish them sustainably,
surely are the people we should be buying our fish from? By supporting local fishing fleets, who fish
in local waters, we sustain ‘passed on’ knowledge of the fishing grounds, which helped generations
of fishermen catch fish, and also know when to move on to new locations and protect the fish stocks
for further generations of local fishermen. We can go a long way to reviving Britain’s fishing fleets,
and therefore the coastal communities where they are based, when we choose to buy locally caught fish,
and especially when we buy from day boats direct.

++On Land

Modern agriculture has banished the prospect of famine, and fed a booming population since the war,
however the successes have come at a price. There are vastly less people employed in agriculture, less
choice of crop and regional variety, vastly less insect-life and natural habitats for all wildlife and our soils are vastly less fertile.

Governments have estimates of how many harvests are left
before our soils are depleted, both in the UK and the world: we should be concerned that the UK has
100 harvests, the world in general 60, before the soils are exhausted: farming has to change. (also
a sobering thought: we have maybe one years supply of food to feed the world, at any on point in time).

The fertility of our soil is probably the most important thing of all the aspects of food production,
for without healthy soil, there will be not enough food. Our planet has very few harvests left
within it’s current top-soils. The solutions are known, ‘regeneration’ of soils is happening all
over the world, by smaller scale farmers using techniques and design principles to suit their local
environment. Slowly mainstream agriculture is coming round, and governments are starting to work
on regenerating our soils using methods similar to those used by organic farmers and smallholders.
(Small gardens and allotments, in many cases have greatly more fertile soil than exists on large farms,
without masses of artificial input.) Most people in the UK live in towns or cities, but most of our land is still devoted to agriculture-
around 70% in England. Vast swathes of our country are covered with large fields of the same
crop,’monocrops’ which are harvested by machines, that require a very small number of people to work
the land. It is slowly being recognized, that growing vast areas of a single crop, is not as efficient
as the ‘market garden’ approach, of growing many varieties – aswell as reducing soil fertility year
by year. Monocrop cultivation reduces the amount of workforce needed to maintain and harvest a crop,
but the savings in labour costs, would seem to be undone by the depletion of the soil. Also, when
vast areas are planted with a single crop, the balance of nature and natural life is upset in many ways.

Our insect populations, have been declining for many years, and many species like wild bees, who are
essential ‘specialist’ pollinators for some very common food crops, are being killed off by some very
common pesticides in use today. The disappearance of hedgerows, and other habitats further reduces
the insect population. Some insects are a pest to a farmers’ crop. But for every pest there is a solution which does not
kill off all other life below/inside the soil, as well as above it. What self respecting cabbage white
butterfly will miss a 50 acre field of cabbages or kale? A disaster for a farm with a handful of crops,
but manageable for a market garden farm, either by design- like companion planting to attract natural
predators to do the work of keeping the common white in check, or by being much easier to manage.
(I have personally stopped an outbreak of these hungry predators by simply going though a small field
of kale and picking off all the little yellow eggs laid by each butterfly, before they hatch.)

Farms of a few generations ago, traditionally produced a much more diverse output of crop, and gave
communities, up and down our country, work and a way of life, and a bigger variety of ‘locally’ grown
produce. Many ‘regional’ food varieties, that were adapted exactly to local conditions in each part
of the country, are now kept alive only in seed banks, and by rare breed enthusiasts. With the rise
in use of ‘Genetically Modified’ (GM) crops, there is a real danger of a total loss of control of
our food production system for farmers, to large agro-corporations. GM seeds are controlled by big
business, and a farmer- if using – is prohibited from keeping some GM seeds for future harvests,
having to buy new seeds each year. No longer will a farmer, of any size, be able to save seed from
one harvest- to grow again, creating a crop which becomes stronger, acclimatised to the local growing
conditions, in time maybe a new regional breed: the very root of ‘agriculture’. One day some food
crops could even become patented, and so illegal to grow without a license. (Potato ™ / Peas (c) ??)
GM crops do have benefits to farmers, by increasing yields, and making crops less prone to pests,
and so reducing the amount of pesticides used. For all their benefits, many believe GM crops to be
a bad idea, with many countries banning their use.

((N.B The first crop to be genetically modified was the tobacco plant, in 1983.))

++Farmers’ Markets, Farms and Farming

Farmers markets give a ready market for smaller farms, each growing a large variety of crops compared
to just one, or a handful. By also growing regional ‘heritage’ varieties of food, a farmer, and
their customers, are keeping alive a variety that has been bred to suit exactly the region it is grow in.

Smaller ‘market garden’ farms produce very high yields, without the industrial scale use of chemicals
to protect their crops. They protect the insect life which are relied upon to pollinate food crops. By
not poisoning ‘predator insects’, which are a natural alternative to using pesticides they balance
high yields with a healthy eco-system and so save money they would otherwise need for synthetic
pesticides. The aim of a well designed organic farm is to work with nature, not against it; to mimic
how nature works to encourage growth and keep pests in check.

With organic methods, and local solutions, small farmers can enrich the health of their soils year
upon year, and not pollute our water table and rivers with run-off of chemicals from large fields
devoid of all but monocrop life. Soils fed by artificial fertilisers year upon year, destroy the
life of the soil, and it’s ability to naturally sustain more life.

Every time someone shops at a farmers’ market, buying local, from more sustainable producers, support
is added for a more sustainable farming model. Money spent at markets, is money spent to keep that
farming model going. Every hands up for organic, for local, and sustainable – puts these things on
the public agenda, and causes others to take note. One day the agriculture industry, will have to
radically change the way our land is farmed. Why wait until we come to a tipping point, where economics
or a nightmare scenario, will force a more sustainable agriculture on everyone? You can support people
who farm like this now – and encourage others to get involved with such farming, or become such farmers.

+Community/Social

The last, but not least reason for using a farmer’s market, is the social function they play
within a community. A good farmers’ market is an asset to any community lucky enough to have one.
(estate agents list a nearby farmers’ market as an asset just like a good school, good shopping
and dining, recreation, and transport links …) A farmers’ market is, a community hub and social
space, a social event, a venue for community workshops, with educational and vocational oportunities,
a source of jobs for local people, and local businesses, and a day out for individuals and families.

At our old market in Parson’s Green, people did not come to buy their shopping and go, they came to
ask the, ‘how, where and why’ of what was sold. Customers would go from one stall to another,
chatting with the traders before they made a purchase. People did not just queue in line to await
their turn, they chatted with one another, formed friendships and would talk about what they cooked,
and exchange recipes and tips – many of which i am thankful for. Our customer-base came from every
corner of the globe, and we would discuss different cooking methods, varieties of fruit and vegetables
and ‘the good life’ in general. Food is important! It is one of the greatest cultural assets we
have, and brings people together in many ways, all of them good.

At Parson’s Green, people would bring their children, and many were young families just starting out
in life, wanting to give their children the best start on the road to a healthy future. Children were
everywhere, including many mothers to be. Families would come to show their children where their
food came from, as most produce was not packaged or trimmed up before sale, it is easier to explain
what infact food is, and how it is grown, and those selling were very knowledgeable and could tell
the story of each food item, each variety, and it’s properties. Children could form a picture of
how things were grown and by whom – as-well as seeing the pre-packaged article. At most farmers’
markets, there are seasonal activities and educational workshops for children to get involved with
(for adults to), relating to food, cooking, the seasons, the environment, life- and the world at work.

Families often strike up relationships and long lasting friendships with the traders. Some children
even go on to later work for a trader on a stall (i know of one case where a trader now works at the
market run by someone who worked on their stall as a child).

As-well as, town and city, communities forming relationships with farmers, from the country, a market is a
place where all people from a community can come together to socialize. People come with their families,
or on their own, and stay chatting, many for hours, after they have bought their shopping. Kids always
had room to play at Parson’s Green, and would not get bored while the ‘grown ups’ mixed. Markets like
this are a destination for a morning, or afternoon out in their own right: a social event.

Markets are a place to meet, to socialize, and a friendly place that can focus children’s, as well
as adult’s, attention on food and well-being – and the work that goes into making the things that
many of us take for granted. Farmers’ markets are about food and the important things in life. These
things cross all cultural boundaries, and are shared by all cultures and communities the world over.
For countless generations and into our own, modern times – and hopefully on, into a sustainable future:
good food has been a part of ‘the good life’.