Old Rural, New Urban: Farm Fresh...Downtown

by James Simpkins

I grew up in suburbs, and no one ate very well there--but it wasn't a bad gig to live there. Still, great food wasn’t really an option—you just went to the grocery store and ate what they had. It turns out we had wonderful farms and plenty of freshly grown produce about the minutes from the house, but they weren’t exactly widely available. Twenty years ago, the farmers’ market of central Ohio amounted to a pick-up parked on the side of the road with its tail-gate open with bushels of corn or stacks of fresh beefsteak tomatoes in the back. The pick-ups are still parked out there during July and August, but nowadays you don’t have to cruise back roads to find farm fresh produce, you just get on the internet and find your closest farmers’ market.

Urban, especially sub-urban, places have started to see a change over the food landscape in recent years, and the in-roads of goods from the country to the city have started being not only more visible, but also more accessible. Historically, this is significant. I mean farmers have been taking their wares to market in the city since urban environments started springing up 6,000 years ago. But they faded out of view after the Industrial Revolution and the rise of our modern food distribution systems. But that’s changing, and for the rising number of urban and suburban gourmands, this can only be good news. Just look at Connecticut: Less than five years ago, we had a handful of farmers’ markets across the state—mostly nowhere convenient. As I have written before, the Collinsville farmers’ market started just a few years ago with less than five vendors. Now it is at capacity and the waiting list is long, not to mention there are more than 140 farmers’ markets across the state on every day of the week from June until October. If we take farmers’ markets as a sign of the demand for fresh food (and we do), this bodes well for getting more fresh, local food into our local supply chain. What I didn’t fully realize until the other day was that it is blurring the lines between rural and urban, farm and city, and bringing farmers into direct, personal encounters with the general public and forming mutually beneficial and sometimes exclusive relationships. (I know I won’t buy beets from anyone except Tom…a local farmer in Burlington, CT)

Farmers’ markets are now in metropolitan areas (along with rooftop gardens and shared greenspaces) and I have to say, seeing a stand of just-picked produce next to a high-rise building as I did while living in Chicago is fantastic. Just the other day driving through the West End in Hartford, I came across one of the CTGrown.com sponsored farm markets at the corner of Farmington Ave. and Sisson Ave. at the United Methodist Church of Hartford. That is a busy corner, but the traffic congestion and tents full of vegetables got along famously, I’m happy to report. Rural areas of our state remain, well, rural, and I wouldn’t be looking for any new high rises in Goshen anytime soon. However, with the arrival of 21^st century agriculture, you can count on the rural continuing to invade the urban for the better.

Want to find the nearest farmers’ market to your Hartford apartment? Click here.  

Want to be your own urban gardener? Go to: www.urbangardeninghelp.com

Comments

[Colby Moore]

This is great news! Farmers market are the way to go, when you're into healthy eating. The prices are decent, and the goods are fresh. I'm glad that they have found way to speed up the transportation of their goods. The future is looking bright for agriculture!