Can farmers' markets help bridge the rural-urban empathy gap?

I have spent the last several days at the Rural Sociological Society's Annual Meeting (its 86th!), held this year in Madison, Wisconsin.  It's been fabulous, and it gave me the opportunity to visit the Dane County Farmer's Market, also known as Saturday on the Square.  The market takes place every Saturday from 6:15 am till 2 pm on the sidewalk around the state capitol grounds periphery.  This makes it an enormous market because the Capitol complex is huge.  

An elaborate honey display.

In this post, I'm primarily going to share photos of the market (all are (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024), though I also want to note how emotional I found the experience of watching farmers lovingly present their wares.  Later in the morning, I was participating in a panel about Ann Eisenberg's new book, Reviving Rural America, and the issue of bridging the rural-urban divide came up.  The question was raised:  how do we cultivate the relationships and empathy along the rural-urban continuum to make workable treating rural America as a commons, which is one of Eisenberg's proposals.  The conversation got me thinking about how farmers markets have the potential to help us build those relationships, to cultivate understanding and appreciation.  

Corn was the exclusive focus of this vendor

The market included several extraordinarily 
colorful mushroom displays.

Photo taken just after 6:15, when some vendors were just getting set up.

Rhubarb was a seasonal focus of several vendors.

These last two photos are of the same tomato vendor's display.

Prior posts about farmers markets are here.