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One of my favorite ways to spend a weekend morning in summertime is at the farmers’ market. Shopping for produce outside in the sunshine turns a routine errand into a fun outing. Here’s why you should head out to your local farmers’ market the next time you need some fresh produce.
Buying locally-grown food reduces carbon emissions. In the most basic terms, the fewer miles that tomato had to travel to get to you, the less you’re contributing to climate change. It’s difficult to know where the fruit and vegetables on the supermarket shelf came from – they might have been grown anywhere from here in California to somewhere in South America. Farmers’ market stalls will tell you where they’re from, but even without checking, you already know they’re within a reasonable driving distance. I try to favor vendors from Half Moon Bay and Pescadero since that’s as local as it gets for me.
Local farms need our support. If you try to shop at locally-owned businesses instead of big-box stores, the same should hold true for locally-grown food. Farming is an economically precarious business – the profits are never huge for small farmers, and bad weather or pests can seriously damage crops. The Bay Area’s agricultural economy, like small-farm economies all around the U.S., is fighting to survive in a world dominated by giant agribusinesses, and we should be supporting them.
Supporting local farms means preserving local open space. In the Bay Area, if we lose our local farms, all that farmland will eventually be converted to development simply because land values are so high here. That’s thousands of acres of soil and greenery on the San Mateo County coast, as well as in southern Santa Clara County and elsewhere, that will go from absorbing carbon and providing habitat for insects and birds to being paved over for development.
Small farms are more sustainable. Monoculture – the system where giant tracts of land are given over to a single crop – is bad for soil health and lends itself easily to mass applications of pesticides and other harmful agricultural techniques. Small farms frequently grow a diversity of crops. They may go the extra mile to practice regenerative farming techniques like rotational farming, planting hedgerows of native plants to support pollinating insects, or applying compost to improve soil carbon absorption. (Some programs provide grant funding to small farmers who use these practices to help save the planet.) Some farms are certified organic, but getting that certification can be onerous and expensive. So, check your farmers’ market to see if the growers there practice pesticide-free and sustainable techniques even without the “organic” label.
It’s better for your health. The modern American diet is woefully short on fresh fruits and vegetables, so stopping at the farmers’ market will help you prioritize those in your meal planning. Furthermore, since it didn’t have to travel for days before getting to the market, locally-grown produce is less likely to have been sitting around for days since it was picked, which means it’s more likely to have retained more of its nutrients. Finally, shopping at farmers’ markets will encourage you to pay attention to what’s in season and what’s not. We’ve become accustomed in our society to having produce available out of season – raspberries in winter, asparagus in autumn. When you realize that if you’re not seeing it at the farmers’ market, it was probably shipped thousands of miles so that you could buy it at a supermarket, you’ll start to think more seriously about your diet’s carbon footprint.
It’s fun! I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I always see way more families with kids at the farmers’ market than at the grocery store. From the live music to the free samples of peaches and nectarines, it can feel more like a festival than a shopping experience. Add in our California sunshine and fresh breezes, and it’s hard to think of a better way to spend a June morning.
So, which farmers’ market should you go to? There are official lists of certified farmers’ markets in San Mateo County and Santa Clara County. I can tell you that my personal favorites are the Saturday morning farmers’ market at the College of San Mateo and the Sunday morning farmers’ market on California Avenue in Palo Alto. Both are large markets with plenty of vendors, so if you can’t find what you’re looking for at one stall, you can probably find it elsewhere. They also have lots of prepared food vendors to tempt you away from buying produce (or just to provide you with lunch when you’re done).
I also can’t forget to mention the option of community-supported agriculture (CSA). I’ll write more about that in a future blog post, but for now, here’s a list of CSAs in San Mateo County and Santa Clara County.
Finally, if you need a one-stop shopping experience where you can pick up milk, beer or other things you can’t find at the farmers’ market, may I recommend Sigona’s Farmers Market – the perfect blend of a farmers’ market and a regular grocery store. They make a point of buying from local growers whenever possible, and all their produce is labeled to tell you where it originated from. If you haven’t been to one of their locations (they’re in Redwood City and Palo Alto), you’re missing out!
What’s your favorite farmers’ market? Tell me in the comments!
