Trenton Farmers Market
Yesterday I visited farmers market. My host kindly took me to Trenton Farmers Market (He is really kind!). I (and my wife) like to visit local markets in foreign countries, which arose our imagination on locals' ordinary life. In this summer, we were lucky to visit Balinese local market. Check some pictures below. You can feel how different (and similar) Indonesian and American local markets are. In future, maybe when I am sixty-four, I want to conduct a research project on international comparison of local market with my wife, then we can visit many foreign countries.
Bali, Indonesia
Trenton, NJ, US
Trenton Farmers Market sell not only fresh vegetables and fruits but also various ethnic foods from Italian to Hispanic to Polish. I found many stuff not sold in supermarkets. Italian shop has diverse inventory of fresh cheese, Polish meats shop sells various kinds of ham and sausage, and Hispanic shop sells casual fast foods, which was inexpensive and delicious (Unfortunately, I forgot the name), as well as dry foods such as red pepper.
Vegetables are very fresh. The assortment of each farmers are unique. Some farmer sell fresh tomato and basil. Other sell okra and coriander. By the way, "okra" is a Japanese loan word (in precise, we call it "Okura"). When I bought it in a supermarket a month ago, the cashier asked me the name of okra to input its unit price into the cash register (Here, supermarkets sell vegetables by weight and the cashier weigh them by the register, so each item should be put into each plastic bag by customer). I was at a loss for the answer, but the woman behind me said "Okra!". She, from Texas told me that okra was popular ingredients of BBQ there. We Japanese prefer lightly boiled Okra with vinegared soy source or Okra tempura.
Anyway, vegetables are very fresh and tasty. I stir-fried okra with some meat last night. This morning I made sandwich with tomato. Unlike vegetable sold in supermarkets, they have a flavor of vegetable. Okra is crisp and crunchy, and heirloom tomato has strong flavor. Considering this quality, the price is reasonable: okra is one dollar and half per one pound.
This market is entertaining for me. Their display is beautiful. Finding vegetable not sold in Japan is curious. At the milk and egg factory shop beside the market, we can observe the manufacturing line of milk from the shop.
The building of the market is owned and maintenanced by local government. It seems difficult to maintain such markets which consists of small scale shops and farmers without financial and managerial support from the government. Do they compete or coexist with supermarkets? How many percent share of US fresh foods market do farmers markets have ? What is farmers' motivation to sell their products at the market by themselves as well as wholesale to retailers? To answer these questions, I should visit there again. Of course, I will.
10/08/2007
Farmers Market
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1 comment:
Hello Matsuke, I've enjoyed reading your blog. It's always interesting to see an outside perspective on what we Americans consider the 'norm'.
It is very difficult for small, local farmers to exist in the current day. Most small farms have been bought up by corporate farming companies that operate huge areas of land and can offer more competitive prices and higher amounts of food to grocery stores. Due to the fact that most grocery stores are huge chains, they often have special pricing agreements with certain corporate farming companies. The poor small farmers simply can't charge a low enough price to compete. For this reason, many small farmers sell much of their produce in farmers markets. The price is still very low but they get to keep all of the profits (whereas the super market would have to mark it up to make a profit). I hope that all makes sense.
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