Farmers markets: a fetish for (supply) chains?

This WSJ piece on growers vs. resellers at farmers markets points to a fundamental weirdness about farmers markets:

Farmers markets, with their hodgepodge of organic kale, artisan rye bread and peach preserves, have surged in popularity in recent years. But now authorities are questioning whether they're missing a crucial ingredient: real farmers.

Presumably, all of these products have a farmer somewhere in their background. So the Mystery of the Missing Farmer is a question of the identity of the person who takes your money and hands you your kale being the same as the identity of the person who grows your kale. It's a nice idea. The idea of hardworking sons and duaghters of the soil bringing their wares to town on market day has an appeal. But it's a sentimental appeal. Neither growing nor selling produce is a solo act, so how much time in the field vs.  how much time in the market must each employee spend in order to be a "real farmer"? If the cultivator and the vendor are two different people, does it matter if they work for the same business, rather than the produce changing hands? I understand that no-reseller policies exist to prevent stuff grown by migrant workers and sold at the supermarket being resold at farmers markets as grown by actual Bard College graduates, but to think of that in terms of no resellers is to make a fetish out of a supply chain, rather than considering what actually makes local agriculture valuable.

Comments

[cinetrix]

Ugh, this is like Whole Foods striving to redefine what organic milk means to bring it in line with customers' pastoral, farmer-in-the-dell fantasies all over again.

[Grace]

This is perplexing, but valid. I know firsthand that I've seen produce being sold at Farmers Markets that was not homegrown. Other local friends agreed. However, none of us had a clue as to what, if anything, we could do about it. We couldn't even agree on how to prove that it wasn't homegrown...strange situation.

[Carla McDonald]

I think there are 2 separate scenarios here. 1) Farmer hires help to sell at market stands. 2) Vendor buys product outright and re-sells at market stands.

I have no problem with the first scenario at all, obviously farmers are very busy folks and cannot always be in 2 places at the same time. But I do question the motivation of a vendor in the second scenario. Their only attachment to the product is to make sure they sell it a profit.

If the seller is not personally representing the grower, how is that any different than buying at the grocery store?

[louis vuitton purses]

If that's not good enough, consider the Tim Allen corollary to Ibsen's famous dictum that if you