In an article about how to sell at a farmers market, Virginia Cooperative Extension horticultural specialist Anthony Bratsch, of the Virginia Tech Department of Horticulture, offers step-by-step instructions on how "farmers" can hoodwink gullible consumers.
They'll shell out cash for anything if the wily vendor uses the right lighting, color schemes and product display gimmicks, Bratsch seems to suggest. For instance, keeping some produce in bulk bins "reinforces the idea that this is a farm market." Yet it doesn't matter a bit whether the produce in the bins actually came directly off a farm or not, as long as it looks pretty, Bratsch insists:
"Customers do not penalize growers who also buy and resell products. Available information indicates that customers shop at a farm market because of freshness and quality of products. They do not indicate that they are disturbed if some of the products may be purchased elsewhere."
The only good thing to say about that remark is that it was published in 2003, and surely by now it is obsolete. All the recent evidence (including a bookshelf full of new books about the virtues of buying locally grown food) indicates that many shoppers are flocking to farmers markets specifically because they want to avoid buying food trucked in from afar. They are angry and feel like they've been robbed when they learn that, all too often at slackly managed markets, that's exactly what they're getting.
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