Tag Archives: farmers market

Happy National Farmers Market Week! August 2-8

Posted on by
taco trio

Squash and okra and mushrooms, oh my!

That’s right, everybody, it’s time for a holiday you probably didn’t know existed but won’t mind celebrating. After all, why shouldn’t we give some props to farmers markets, which bring fresh, healthy, local food to cities, where lots of people need and want it? And if you’re wondering how exactly to celebrate, I’ve got some suggestions.

Why not try out a market you’ve never been to before? This past Sunday, I visited my friend Mignon in D.C. and we hit up the DuPont Circle farmers market, a first trip for both of us. The wealth of samples won me over immediately. It reminded me of when my grandma and I used to form entire lunches out of the samples at Sam’s Club, except here it was oh-so-fresh peaches and cubes of artisan cheese. As if that wasn’t enough, we also indulged in the taco trio at the Chaia booth. Summer squash with dill sauce and goat cheese in a hot-off-the-griddle tortilla? Yes, please! Okay, sure, I was so in love with the market that I almost missed my bus, but if you told me I’d have to sprint through Union Station every time I ate one of those tacos, my decision would remain unchanged. Continue reading →

Community News: Big Government in Your Farmers Market

Posted on by

Though few of us may stop to consider the fact, the modern farmers market is the true market of humanity.  The vast, fluorescent, all-in-one supermarkets where most of us buy our groceries are of a species only about 65-years-old.  They were born out of the boom of technology, cars, and suburbs that became the West’s reward for winning the Second World War.  They were a dramatic upheaval, and it’s a testament to their power that so many of us today see them as the default purveyor of food.

But the farmers market is the original market.  It’s the market that grew up along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.  It’s the market that still delivers the goods on most corners of Earth.  And—with a simple obviousness that should make us stop and consider just how marketing psychology and a buck have shaped America—it’s the market that provides poor people all over the world with good, healthy food.  Only in America are the poorest people the fattest.  Elsewhere, they pay their neighbors for vegetables picked this morning and a chicken killed last night.

But some unsung, heroic bureaucrats in D.C. are getting it together.  The Feds have committed $4 Million Dollars to equip the country’s 7,100 farmers markets with the apps and bandwidth to process food stamps.  Food stamps aren’t really stamps anymore, they are electronic credits distributed among a few acronymic programs like the EBT and WIC.  Right now, less than a quarter of those 7,100 markets are able to swipe plastic cards and send a series of digits zinging through wires to a database somewhere.  Enter Big Government and their aim to add another 4,000 markets to that list.  And enter a company named the Novo Dia Group that has developed an iPhone app to take the process wireless.

Continue reading →