Over at GOOD magazine's blog, Borborygmi has a quite interesting post on the limits, promise, and utility of farmers' markets:

Even today, many markets offer little guarantee of local food and no guarantee that the vendor himself grew what he’s selling… So if markets are not necessarily better for the environment and they aren’t always transparent about the source of food, what are they for?

In a recent essay on the food movement, Michael Pollan cites a sociologist who found that shoppers were 10 times as likely to spark up a conversation at a market compared to a grocery store. He's not alone in suggesting that farmers’ markets are not exclusively designed for buy-local commerce. In Market Day in Provence, an ethnographic study of southern France’s outdoor markets, author Michèle de La Pradelle suggests that street markets serve little economic function; their purpose is cultural. Their potential includes reinvigorated public space, walkable neighborhoods, and places where people can talk about, touch, and ask questions about the food they’re purchasing—directly from the farmer (or, in some cases, the middleman).

Both scholars and activists have cited the recent growth of farmers' markets as evidence of a great transformation in food distribution. The Obama Administration has jumped on the bandwagon with a White House market on Thursdays (arguably a better idea than its playtime-in-the-potato patch on the South Lawn). However, until there’s greater transparency about where food is coming from and more equal racial and class participation in farmers’ markets, their promise for widespread social transformation falls short. For now, let's make those abundant market-time conversations raise questions about supplemental nutrition programs and who actually picked those peppers.