On California's farmers markets (all 700 of them) and the legal changes that made them possible

Farmer's Market, Nevada City, California
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018

Shawn Hubler writes in today's New York Times from Sacramento (which happens to be my home) in what reads a bit like a love letter to the state's farmers markets.  But the piece also includes this interesting back story on how changes in legal regulation permitted the revival of these markets in the Golden State.  

Common in the 1930s, [farmers markets] were all but wiped out in the 1950s and ’60s by the regulations that helped make California agriculture a phenomenon worldwide.

Sorting, packing, transportation and sales were so thoroughly geared to the mass market that it was all but impossible for farmers to bypass wholesale distributors and packing houses. Small growers were sacrificing much of their profit margins. Tree fruit was going to waste by the ton because it could not be sold unless it conformed to strict standards governing its size, color and ripeness, the better for shipping and supermarket display.

That changed in the 1970s as small farmers, consumer activists and anti-hunger organizations lobbied to move agricultural policy, even if only a little, at the federal level and in California. The state’s Direct Marketing Act of 1978 — signed by Jerry Brown, then in his first stint as governor — was a tipping point as public opinion shifted.

Here are two posts I did a decade ago (!) about two very different farmers markets, one in my hometown (Newton County, Arkansas), which is a persistent poverty county, and the other in posh Telluride, Colorado, an example of rural gentrification.  Enjoy the photos!  

Nevada City Farmer's Market, Nevada County, California
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2018