Saying the unsayable… Farmers markets are overpriced dens of smugness
that exploit our guilt about not living closer to nature
Financial Times, April 06, 2002


Like those blisters that appear in the mouths of sheep infected with foot-and-mouth, farmers markets have been springing up all over the country in the
past couple of years, bringing their heady blend of self-righteousness and sky-high prices to middle-class enclaves everywhere from Banff to Billericay.

Barely a week goes by without another cobbled precinct or disused railway arch being taken over by surly youths in dungarees. From behind piles of unmarked, undated produce they glower at you over their Nintendo Game Boys, daring you to suggest that £4.50 for a small piece of cheese is a bit steep. And, when once we went to the supermarket to do our local shop – and for something posher nipped into M&S – now it’s virtually illegal to hold a dinner party in certain parts of London without at least three ingredients from some organic farm near Keswick.

In the old days, farmers markets were exactly that. Farmers grew/grazed/ milked things on their farms and brought the results to a central point where customers bought them. It was a good system. People bought locally. Food didn’t have to travel far before it reached the dinner table and Farmer Giles went back home to spend the money on more seeds/sheep/cows. And if you couldn’t find something you liked at the market – because, for instance, it was midwinter and kiwi fruit weren’t doing too well on the hills of Cumbria – well, tough. You ate parsnips until the season changed.

Then came the supermarkets. Farmers found their parsnips didn’t really compete with kumquats flown in by that nice Mr Sainsbury, and withdrew into the relative comfort of set-aside, subsidy and selling-up. Until, that is, someone pointed out that in every city there is a large number of people who will pay through the nose to assuage their guilt about not living closer to nature.
It was the agricultural version of the 49er gold rush. Suddenly, vans around the country were loaded up with home-made bread, goats’ cheese, “pedigree steaks”, apples (with the mud still on!) and odds and sods from the shed behind the barn. Tanks were filled with that nice, low-duty diesel. And the motorways were jammed with rural types racing towards the next pocket of middle-class largesse.

And we lapped it up, of course. The food tasted better than that prepacked supermarket rubbish. It was cool to “buy from the source”, even if we weren’t sure where the source was. And wandering around the stalls tasting the samples made us feel like Jamie Oliver.

The problem came when the supermarkets caught on and started stocking posher, nicer food that tasted just as good and cost half as much. Now the farmers markets had to ratchet things up a notch.

In came “speciality” items, like honey, wicker baskets and beeswax candles. In came organic (not that common in the early markets). And, most importantly, in came the art of illusion. Suddenly farmers markets weren’t markets, nor did they feature many farmers. Instead they had become travelling circuses that rolled into town once a week to give the punters some foodie magic.

And circuses they are. Step into a farmers market and we are awestruck by the place. We love to gawp at the real fish on the fish stall (no Cellophane!). We thrill at the showbiz of the stir-fry cookery demo. Having absorbed the whole of Delia, Nigel, Jamie and Nigella, we’ve been to the cash machine and are actually ready to buy some ingredients. But we haven’t gone to a shop. We have come to the market. And unfortunately we have left our minds behind.

Here’s the man who spends 15 minutes in the cheese aisle at Tesco comparing prices per 100g, now happy to pay anything for market cheese that has real mould on it. There’s a woman paying a mark-up of 400 per cent over her local corner shop because she’s read in The Guardian that it’s better to buy from the producer. And there are the crowds paying organic prices for non-organic fruit, just because the ordinary fruit-and-veg stall is next to the one that sells organic – as if being organic is some sort of fruit-and-veg infectious disease. It’s as if someone has filled the air with idiot spray.

Farmers markets should go back to being that: markets run by farmers.
Go to any small town in France and you’ll find a daily market where each morning you can buy a little bit of local produce for your dinner. Because it’s there every day, you know the stuff is fresh. While you’re there you can
also get a squeegee mop for the washing up and some bin-liners. And, like markets in the Adam Smith sense of the word, the prices go up and down according to demand.

The UK versions are little more than shopping centres in another guise. They are like Bluewater, only colder, more expensive and without toilets. They are sports arenas where country entrepreneurs pander to urban foolishness, allowing us to pretend to be all foodie and making us feel warm and in touch with the land when we break into another tenner for “home-made quiche” that was knocked out on an industrial estate near Burnley.

It’s time for everyone involved in farmers markets – farmers (if you can find one), stallholders, organisers, customers – to look again at the beasts these places have become.

If they can find a way back to their roots – places where you could
buy good food that hadn’t travelled too far and at prices that were reasonable to both seller and buyer – farmers markets will thrive without losing their individuality. Continue on the current road and the only outcome will be corporatisation. Organic Starbucks, anyone? I’ll see you down at Asda.