Reasons to Market #1: For the Pleasure

All the reasons why you should buy local continue in the media and amongst the foodies and home chef’s alike, but a much more muted fashion than say, 10 or 20 years ago.

 In the not so long/not so short time that I’ve been farming, farms have come and gone, and people have dedicated themselves to and then retracted from buying more local. We tend to put out in advance all that it will bring us, just to realize that it takes a bit of effort to live that ethic. All the menu planning! All the taking seasons into considerations! The logistics…the LOGISTICS?! And…Trader Joe’s has chocolate, so… 

 I have no brain scans to back me up but, I think that despite all our good intentions, this is just the way we are wired. To buy local, well sure…you’ll be healthier for it, you’ll reduce food miles and waste, you’ll support a grower directly, the web of societal connections will become stronger and stronger and blah, blah blah. At the end of the day it’s a pain in the butt! They say that you should eat like your great-great-grandma did, but the truth is she was lucky. She was able to eat local, make her own sauerkraut, and pluck eggs direct from the butts of chickens not because she was a hipster influencer, buy because that is what she had to do to survive. We romanticize the lifestyles of people who, for the most part, had no other option. The people we call heroes were the people who simply had their backs against the wall. 

 If given the choice, dollars to donuts, granny would have called in a sushi delivery and sat at home streaming Golden Girls. If we do it, old g-g-granny would do it too. 

 So where to go from here?

 You know the experiment with the kids and the marshmallows? The one where they leave a kid in a room alone with a marshmallow and tell them if they don’t eat it, then they will get two marshmallows later, and most kids eat the one anyway? I think the situation that we face with our food choices is even more difficult than that. We are faced with being told that if we don’t eat the marshmallow, that social theory says that we will get maybe 2 later, maybe more than that, maybe nothing…no one knows for sure. But just…don’t eat the marshmallow, ok? We actually want to see what happens if you don’t eat the marshmallow, so please don’t eat it!

 Ands 4 times out of 5, we eat the marshmallow.

 But the thing is…marshmallows are crap. 

 The market customers that I know who have kept up with buying local year after year don’t do it for the ethics of it or for their health (though those are related to the real reason). They do it for the pleasure. They do it because their life feels richer for it. They do it because they looked at the marshmallow and said, “Is marshmallows really all you got around here?” All those reasons that we’ve been told as to why eating local is better are not done on their watch because they are the right thing to do…they are done because it feels good. 

 Downside: this pleasure takes effort.  

 Upside: once the habit sets in, it’s goddamn worth it. 

 One day our backs will be up against the wall. We are going to be SUPER local! We’ll be making miso behind the fridge, raising a herd of crickets beneath the sink, and keeping clandestine chickens in the closet. Not because we are hipsters with a following and masterclasses to sell, but because we will have no choice. This is survival, people!! Let’s just call this future dystopia: “Great-Great-Granny’s Revenge”. 

 But, before this day arrives, let’s get pre-revenge…by doing it for the pleasure.