‘They’ want to bring farmers closer to their clients. The
supply needs to get closer to the demands. Interesting. I’ve already talked
about milk farmers going from door to door,
wrote about open farm days and many posts named the words urbanfarming. But
this isn’t all of it.
To create a more intense relation between consumer and the
produce they eat you can undertake different actions. Some of them are passive
and really easy to execute: put a picture of the farmers’ family on a jar of
milk underlined with a romantic text ‘written by the farmer himself’ and the
consumer will immediately feel that he knows where his milk comes from. Or –
another relatively option – is to shoot a tv commercial in ‘a sunny gold
colored grain field where healthy and strong man and woman working hard to get
the cereals for our breakfast or bread’. Don’t you want to buy it?
It might become more difficult if you like the consumer and
producer to actually meet. Most of the produce process are not as romantic as
the consumers like to think or are told. So it becomes a delicate thing and the
organization of the event needs to think carefully who to introduce and who
not. Besides that it asks an effort from the consumer. Are they curious enough
to enter the dirty and smelly yard of the farmer?
Farmers markets seem to be popular these days but also here
you can wonder whether you would really meet the farmer? Most of the time he
hasn’t time to sell his own produce and asks someone to represent him. Not
speaking any bad of the knowledge on products of that person.
More modern and very convenient for the
hard-worker-with-a-full-agenda might be the internet shopping.
You go online, check in on the website of your local farmer or fresh food
supplier, chose the products you need that week and fill your basket. The only
thing you then have to do is wait until the doorbell rings. Easy as it is. But
not very a moment in which you really encounter he who produces your food.
Although I don’t sound really convinced on it, I decided to
try it. A group of young people created a nice website which allows you to
order different baskets filled with vegetables and/or fruits. You get local
produce, fresh from the field right on your doorstep. Recipes included. I do
feel good about it. It gives me the feeling that I support a local farmer, that
I do reduce transport emissions and I have the idea to get the produce which
are in fact from the season. Yummy. And maybe, when the weather starts to get a
little better, I give it a try. I will go and find ‘my farmer’ and tell him
what I think of my produce. I’ll let you
know when the time is there.
