Posted: 05/06/2010 12:00:00 AM MDT
EL PASO -- I know we live in a desert and our food has to travel more miles to get to us.
But it's still depressing at the store to be picking through bruised tomatoes, limp asparagus and wilted lettuce that look like they've fallen off the truck on their way to better-stocked places. Thankfully, with the summer coming, we can look forward to farmers markets sprouting all around El Paso.
Farmers markets give small farmers the chance to sell produce locally on a weekly basis, and they give consumers the chance to support the local agriculture and eat better for a reasonable price. Environmentally, farmers markets allow us to purchase food that hasn't traveled across the country or even overseas, emitting tons of greenhouse gases in the process. Did you know that most garlic sold in the U.S. now comes from China? Proponents of eating local foods, who call themselves locavores, also say that food security means being able to feed ourselves locally.
In El Paso, locavores may starve. That's because many so-called farmers markets are really crafts fairs. And as much as I like handmade soap, what I really want is produce -- plump tomatoes, bright green chiles, crisp onions and firm squash. Last Sunday morning, I tried the new farmers market at the outlet mall on the West Side, the season's first farmers market in El Paso. Out of about 20 booths, exactly one sold farm products.
It was a booth manned by a couple of pecan farmers from Fabens. Since I didn't plan on making pecan pies, I passed on the giant bags of pecans ($8) but I bought a jar of honey ($6) that turned out to be delicious, and a dozen eggs ($3) that were all different colors (including green) because they come from different breeds of chickens. They tasted just like white eggs. The farmer lady warned me that the eggs were local but not organic. Organic eggs come from chickens that are fed organic feed and that are free-range. "We tried to let them roam free, but the coyotes got them," she said.
Across the street from the market was a roadside vegetable stand with avocados, mangoes and limes, but all of it was from California and Mexico.
At that point, I realized something. It makes people pretty nervous when you go around asking them where their food is from. But that's what we have to do as mindful consumers. We need to keep an eye on so-called food miles --Êanything coming from farther than a day's drive is not green.
The farmers market season is just starting, and we can look forward to some promising newcomers:
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Re: "Last Sunday morning, I tried the new farmers market at the outlet mall on the West Side, the season's first farmers market in El Paso. Out of about 20 booths, exactly one sold farm products"
ReplyDeleteBeing one of the vendors at the outlet mall, I feel you did little to enhance the vendors who do attend this new market. True, there is only one farm product to date but did you really expect to find the fresh produce like tomatoes, squash, peppers, okra and other types of produce in early May?
It may behoove you to understand our area has to wait until these crops grow, mature and are ready for picking, which is not until early summer at best for this to happen. Until then it is we arts and craft vendors that hold down the proverbial fort until the produce arrives as we act as a catalyst for the hungry patrons such as yourself to come to and see originality at a fair price that is handmade with no middleman to deal with not unlike the area farmer's products which we all look forward to.
Cecil B. Lee