Takin’ it to the streets

It's the Pitts
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We're all supposed to have gone global by now. If you want a new computer, you phone a call center in India which passes on your order to a multinational corporation in China who uses chips made in Taiwan, monitors made in Korea, put together by Bangladesh workers in a plant in Singapore and shipped on Iranian flagged cargo ships to Long Beach where Mexican workers put it on a German owned DHL delivery van for delivery to your house in Little Italy or Chinatown.

That’s the very definition of globalization, and it’s basically the same blueprint for the food you eat. Melons will come from Mexico, citrus from Chile, avocados from foreign corporate farms, beef from a Brazilian-owned firm with plants in Australia, and lamb freighted in from New Zealand. Your food will be delivered by an Uber chauffeur driving a Volvo made in Sweden because folks don’t have the time to shop any more.

The American family farm is supposedly dead, and if you aren’t the absolute low-cost producer you’d better be thinking about your exit strategy. If you produce anything that involves labor, it’s already too late. Better learn to speak Chinese and make sure your passport is up to date. And this all makes perfect economic sense.

So, how do you explain the burgeoning farmers market movement where busy people of all ages wander down streets filled with fruits, vegetables and even meat that was grown just down the road? Folks have made a party out of buying food and are going gaga over locally grown garbanzos and gouda. “Going to market” is the way people in third world countries shop, but it’s not supposed to be this way in 21st-century America. It’s certainly not convenient, and yet there are a dozen towns in my county and every single one has a farmer’s market at least one day per week. And every one is busy. In an age gone goofy over globalism, how do you explain that?

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