The Larches - Environmentally Friendly Lakeland Cottage

We’ve been fans of Keswick’s Saturday market for years, so it was natural that we would want to take a look this month at the farmers’ market in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. 

To get the best you need to be there early as this is a popular venue for people of all ages.

Farmers’ markets have proliferated in recent years from the first one in Bath, UK established in September 1997 in response to discussions about the Local Agenda 21 Commission. There are now over 500 in the UK.

Only a mile from Chicago’s downtown skyscrapers, the Lincoln Park market stalls are full of a wide range of produce and provide a marvellous contrast of colours.

Sustainability and environmental issues are key concerns for producers and many of the farms have full organic credentials or are certified green.

Farmers’ markets are not-for-profit bodies and have been increasingly popular in the US. They are overseen by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In the last seven years they have increased from 1755 to 7175, making a 17% increase in the last year alone.

But this is not big business like the average 450 acre farms in the prairies of Illinois and Iowa, where millions of tons of field corn (or maize) are grown every year for home beef production, for the rapidly expanding Chinese market and for ethanol production.

Typically farmers’ markets are made up of small producers with orchards or perhaps a 7 acre garden farm – with intense cultivation of tomatoes, peppers, onions, carrots, fruits etc – or others breeding cattle and pigs with specialist production of smoked meats. Most farms are under 50 acres and have to be within a defined radius; in Chicago’s case this is 300 miles, though for other markets it is a lot less.

A campaign of the market at present is to encourage shoppers to pledge to be ‘locavores‘, only buying and eating produce from within a defined local area.

Often the vegetable producers will be supported by CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) schemes where members of the local community guarantee to take a box of vegetables every week during the growing season. While people on benefits with food vouchers can shop here, prices of the produce are on the high side and tend to attract shoppers with more disposable income, higher qualifications and an interest in environmental issues.

The same however does not apply to the farmers’ markets in rural areas where jobs are limited and wages low and unemployment, well over the national rate of 9%, is hitting communities hard.

A New York Times article “Vegetable gardens are booming in a fallow economy” (9th September 2011) describes the situation in East Kentucky in the Appalachian foothills.

Here rural residents are turning over their ground and selling the surplus from their gardens at low cost to the elderly and unemployed, who look to squeeze their budgets to make ends meet.

As Tim Woods, Professor of Agricultural Economy at Kentucky University puts it: “You won’t see certified organic products or fancy marketing here. It’s a very different world.” But the growth is similar with a doubling of markets there since 2004.