Rebel with a Cause: What We Can Learn from the Big Box Stores

I am an advocate for farmers markets and CSAs.
But if we really want the masses to “buy local,”
do we need to consider another model?

By Joel Salatin

Anyone who knows me knows I’m an ardent supporter of farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSA). Direct-marketing models linking farmers to buyers are as varied as entrepreneurial ingenuity. Generally, I’m in favor of anything other than nameless, faceless, opaque industrial food–based supermarkets.

But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to move this heritage-based food movement beyond 1 percent market penetration. Our nearest farmers market, founded nearly 20 years ago, has not yet had cumulative sales in its entire history equal to our farm’s gross sales in one year. I’m not bragging—I’m just pointing out how tiny the local food network is. So what’s holding it back?

I think we need to appreciate the secret of supermarkets’ success. When we compare their features to those of farmers markets and CSAs, I think we can begin to see why truly local food is not purchased more widely. And perhaps rather than start more farmers markets, we need to channel our efforts elsewhere.

Farmers markets are destination places. Normally, customers have to make a special trip within a narrow window of time to patronize them. CSAs require that consumers plan ahead, take produce they may not like, and drive out to a pickup place. And seldom do either of these venues offer a complete menu: They typically lack dairy, meat, poultry, and processed items like noodles, soups, and heat-n-eat convenience foods. And both of these venues require additional trips (read: precious time away from the farm) for farmers to attend the venue.

Compare that to a Kroger or Giant store. They are open 24/7 so shoppers can shop at their convenience. They have a huge diversity of both raw and processed product, including dairy and meat. Farmers don’t have to make a special trip to take their wares there because their products enter the food system from centralized pickup points, whether it be a grain elevator, livestock sale barn, or processing facility. In the case of processors like Tyson and Smithfield, farmers under contract don’t have to go anywhere because the company comes and picks up the chickens or hogs. And the store’s cashiers are always busy, which helps justify the overhead spent on them.

Why can’t we take these basic supermarket features and re-create them on a local level? What would such a model look like? First, it would be on a main drag, located preferably next to Walmart or in the retail commercial district where people go all the time anyway to shop. The hours would be extended enough to catch people when they are already out and about—going to and coming home from work, volleyball, and ballet practice. Customers could pop in and shop conveniently.

Farmers could come by with their wares when they are already out and about running errands. The ideal venue would have a commercial kitchen with a diner on one end so patrons could enjoy a meal. The kitchen would be used to create processed foods, from noodles to heavy soups, utilizing raw items from the store no longer at the peak of freshness. Pot pies and frozen pizzas would offer opportunities to salvage food before it spoils, creating an in-house safety net for the farmers’ items.

The whole idea here is to scale down and create proximity in all the food components that currently occupy mammoth single-use or single-item processing plants around the country. A community-scaled processing facility like the one I just described should be able to handle many different items, not just green beans. That leverages the stainless steel, walk-in coolers, and staff expertise across several food items. This way even a small processing facility can be as efficient overall as a huge single-item plant doing just green beans or tomato soup.

One of the biggest expenses in specialty stores is staffing the cash registers, so cashiers need to stay busy. In this new model, the cash register would service the locally supplied market as well as the diner—similar to Cracker Barrel’s store-and-restaurant concept—so it would stay busy with the multiple sales streams. And the diversity in real-time purchasing allows customers to cherry-pick, buying only what they want.

Put them together and offer real-time diversified buying options to customers. The one-stop shop model works. We just need to figure out what a truly transparent, localized one-stop shop looks like.

Once we figure that out, heritage-based food can penetrate much farther and deeper into the marketplace. As wonderful as farmers markets and CSAs are—and as crucial as it is that consumers have the opportunity to meet the people growing their food—I don’t think they will ever yield the kind of marketplace penetration needed to fundamentally change our food system. We have to make it easier for people to buy local, not harder. The future can’t be the limited options of either extreme: farmers markets and CSAs or Walmart.

Of course, the other conundrum related to further market penetration is how successful “integrity food” operations get sucked into the industrial system, like when Walmart calls and wants your product. Is Walmart really where integrity food should go? Is there something about that arrangement that actually compromises integrity food? I don’t have answers for all these questions, but I am passionate about trying to localize, to increase transparency. As discussed in the film Food, Inc., whether or not Stonyfield has compromised since its products were picked up by Walmart is subject to debate. But why should Virginians eat Stonyfield yogurt bought at Walmart? Why can’t folks in Virginia eat Virginia-made yogurt that comes from Virginia-raised grass-fed cows—bought at convenient, locally operated stores?
I’m sure some of my friends who are die-hard farmers market supporters are ready to string me up at this point, but I have tried several of those market venues over the years and found them frustrating for a lot of reasons. Yes, farmers markets will be here for a long time. But a lot of folks don’t want to pay a bunch of different vendors, and they enjoy a bit more shopping anonymity.

Being able to dash into a store that’s on your way home from soccer practice, fill up a cart with the specific locally produced and processed items you want, and pay for it all at a single cash register—now that’s an idea that should be explored.

Internationally acclaimed conference speaker and author Joel Salatin and his family operate Polyface Farms in Augusta County near Staunton, Virginia. He is also co-owner of T&E Meats in Harrisonburg.