Jacob's Cove Blog

The first time we went to a farmers market we were trying to sell our tomatoes for $3 a pound.  We were there because we couldn’t eat all the fruit coming off my husband’s 600 heirloom tomato plant experiment.  We thought we’d give the farmers market a try.

It was a tough sell.  We were at the Thanksgiving Point Friday night farmer’s market next to a farmer selling tomatoes for $5 a box.  Granted, his were not heirlooms and neither were they organic but the customers didn’t seem to mind.  We did sell over 100 pounds but had a lot of leftovers.

The next morning Dale headed to Salt Lake to try the downtown farmer’s market. He also decided to try to sell for $4 a pound.  It was a cool and rainy morning.  I was at home with the baby when I received a call from Dale around 8:30 a.m.  “Get out to the garden!” he yelled.  “Pick anything with color.  They’re buying it all!”  I rushed outside in the rain and began picking frantically.  I packed up the baby and we drove to Salt Lake to deliver the additional fruit.  We sold it all.

Year after year we grow and sell to our customers.  Like most farmers we have our ardent fans who tell us they come to the market just to buy our tomatoes.  And, like most farmers, we have people who are not our customers tell us that we are too expensive.  $4 a pound for tomatoes did seem like a lot of money until I was the one out there in the garden at 5 a.m. on a summer morning while my neighbors slept in.  It seems expensive until your husband spends the night out knocking snow off the plastic tunnels protecting the seedlings in April.  He’s not just protecting his tomatoes he’s protecting your food!  When it’s your children standing out in an October rain to service farmer’s market customers $4 a pound seems like a deal.

Why is it that real food is so seemingly expensive? A significant part of the answer is U.S. government farm policy.  We pay farmers to overproduce genetically modified corn which is not suitable for human or animal consumption.  The farmer grows it at a loss and relies on taxpayer subsidies (read “you and me”) to give him his “profit.”  This corn is fed to cows in feed lots to produce sickly and cheap industrial beef.  This corn is also turned into corn syrup and added to almost every processed food without exception.

Between 1985 and 2000 the price of a soft drink decreased 25% while the prices of fruits and vegetables during the same time increased 40% (when adjusted for inflation).  One is subsidized and makes us sick and the other is not and does not.  This isn’t just bad farm policy it’s a recipe for the health care disaster we’re seeing right now.

But how do corn subsidies translate into why local food is expensive?  The corn creates an illusion of cheap food.  When you say that real food is expensive you are comparing it to something.  The food you are usually comparing it to has no real relationship to real food.  The comparison is usually between apples and oranges even though they both look like tomatoes.  If we calculated the real cost of real food to the real cost of fake food there would be no comparison.

So when you think real food is expensive, ask yourself, “Compared to what?”

Remember, eat what’s real.