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Big box supermarkets routinely pressure producers into accepting extremely low prices so that they can sell them for cheap in their stores. It’s either you accept the price or they don’t sell your produce at all. Farmer’s markets let producers sell their stuff at a price that allows them to live from their work
I’d rather pay higher prices to my local farmer that gives me quality food than a faceless corporation that gives me shitty products that travelled 10,000 kilometers and paid every single worker along that route as little as possible.
It’s ok to dislike corporations but how are the veggies “shitty?”
Scaled markets prefer patented hybrid seeds (yes, that’s real) that have high shelf life, resistance to bruising, and a uniform shape that makes them easy to pack. And high-yield of course. The flavour isn’t really relevant to the corporate farming system, certainly not as much as crop yield and longevity for shipping them is. And of course these patented hybrids are all sterile so farmers have to buy more seeds each year.
Go to a smaller independent business however, and they’re often using different breeds. Maybe they can’t afford (or qualify for) these fancy hybrids. Maybe they just don’t want them.
If you want a tomato that is full of flavour and ripened on the plant, fed with sugar from the stalk, you can’t get one from a supermarket. It’s just cheaper to pick them early while they’re green, ship them, and let them ‘ripen’ (or turn red) in an enzyme bin, even if they’re not gaining any sugars that way without the plant.
I prefer local home-grown because I prefer delicious tomatoes that last a week in the fridge more than I do sour water-balloons that look pristine and shiny on the counter for twice as long. I buy my food to eat it, not look at it.
You’re describing personal taste. None of what you’ve said establishes these vegetables as “shitty.”
Your description of how seeds are managed at a genetic level by larger corporations is spot-on, however.
You’re describing personal taste.
If your takeaway from them is that veggies modified to ship, picked green and gassed to ripe is personal taste, you really haven’t a leg to stand on.
He literally states: “I prefer.”
Are you looking for an argument on his behalf?
Because they taste like shit? They’re also less nutritious too. The entire fucking point of food is to eat it, and we’ve developed varieties that taste bland, are unsatisfying, and are less nutritionally complex. We have un-fooded our food.
Shitty flavour. Shitty nutrition. Shitty anti-trust profit practices.
‘Shitty’ is an adjective for value. Value is personal. Any answer for why somebody would value the food less and consider it shitty is the question you’re asking, and if you don’t like that answer, then your question is dishonest.
You said, “I buy my food to eat it, not look at it.”
Now you’re claiming the opposite while also establishing your personal preference as the standard for non-shitty.
Do you see how this is confusing to anyone reading your comments?
… isn’t the market a middle man? They charge for the booths.
No, they’re a cost of doing business.
i.e. a middle man
A farmer could set up a stand outside their driveway and advertise on Facebook, but the farmer’s market middle man acts as a go between to handle logistics and advertising and customer availability and creates a safe marketplace for customers and vendors.
A lot of these markets are more community-focused and, yeah, they’ll charge something but not beyond the actual cost of putting the market together. They’re not making a profit. In some places the state or municipality will organize the markets in order to foster the local food/ag scene.
Do you think those things mean something isn’t a middle man?
The cost of putting the market together is always going to be higher than selling out of a van. Bigger venue, higher costs. It’s worth it for the increased sales, but the middle man still gets a cut. Even if there’s no profit, even if the cut is fair, there’s still a cut.
No, that’s not what middle man means.
A middle man is an intermediary. I do not buy food from the farmers market. I buy it from farmers who have paid rent to be at the farmers market. The market is the landlord, not the middle man.
Landlords are middle men.
Is Amazon not a middle man? In many cases you’re buying directly from the seller, just like at a farmer’s market. Amazon, like a farmer’s market, exists to facilitate trade between sellers and buyers. It just collects rents.
No. Absolutely not. Landlords are middle men between tenant and the earth. But they are not middle men between consumers and commercial tenants.
Amazon is ABSOLUTELY a middle man because you DO NOT buy directly from the seller you pay Amazon and Amazon pays the seller.
Landlords are middle men between tenant and the earth. But they are not middle men between consumers and commercial tenants.
And commercial tenants can’t access customers without the landlord.
Face it, they’re middle men.
