Good Things Come to Those Who Shop Local
The local shopping movement sweeps through Ann Arbor
—By Dora Usdan
I woke up with a startle to my roommate knocking on my door. Although it was a Saturday at 8:30 am and much too early for a college student to be awake, this is routine in my house. On Saturday’s my roommates and I observe our own version of waking up and going to church—we wake up and go to the Ann Arbor Farmers Market to get fruits, vegetables, and goodies for the week.
More and more college students are skipping Kroger and instead grocery shopping at the Farmers Market and at Argus Farm Stop, even though shopping locally can be more expensive, and Ann Arbor is a community with a large student population with limited resources. So, how has Ann Arbor responded to the shop local movement and how does it relate to the college campus?
What is the shop local trend?
Shopping locally is a movement to combat unsustainable corporate practices and foster local engagement and economic growth. Shopping locally is popular because it creates a greater sense of community under a narrative of [paying] it forward to people in your community.
University of Michigan student Skylar Pile enjoys shopping locally because she gets to know the sellers, and they can tailor their recommendations to her preferences. “When I finish my candle, I enjoy the process of picking a refill with the vendor at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, who remembers what types of scents I like.”
What do the numbers say?
Since Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a tremendous push to support local businesses, specifically grocers and farmers harvesting and selling in season produce, grain, and poultry. According to Forbes, in 2022 consumers are shopping locally and small, and this post-pandemic shopping trend has had positive community responses. Much of this is due to Generation Z. Kate Hardcastle writes for Forbes that only 32% of Gen Z believes “the future of food shopping is one that will take place in a traditional supermarket.”
In addition to small-scale community benefits, shopping locally is better for the environment and minimizing effects of global warming. Shopping for food locally is more sustainable because it reduces food mileage, is more accessible, and protects local land. Large grocery corporations are responsible for 5-17 times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions than regional farmers are. Local producers are much more likely to employ sustainable harvesting practices, and are deeply invested in the environmental longevity of their farms.
Who is shopping small on a national scale?
While shopping locally is trending in the media as a way to consume more sustainably and consciously, it is not a reality for most Americans. According to a 2020 Michigan Daily article by Olivia Hintz, “For millions of Americans—especially people living in low-income communities of color—farmer’s markets and other farm-to-table vendors cannot be found close to their neighborhood.”
Being able to shop local is definitely a question of privilege in the United States. Shopping locally can be more expensive, due to the farmers involved being paid a fair wage. While this is ethically a major improvement, it can be a barrier to lower-income shoppers. As of 2019, approximately 36 million people receive food supplementation from food stamps, largely unaccepted in small stores. In Michigan, there is a Double Up Food Bucks program where up to $20 of money spent on local produce is price matched, allowing consumers with limited budgets to support vendors at farmers markets.
In addition to a price barrier, spaces to shop locally like farm stops and farmers markets are more prevalent in cities and other higher-income areas. This can prohibit smaller communities and more rural places from accessing locally made goods. These areas are often referred to as “food deserts,” parts of the country where fresh, healthy food is hard to come by, but highly processed prepared snacks and foods are highly prevalent. Most of these food deserts were created by mass exoduses from rural farm lands to cities with the rise of industrialization.
These barriers result in the shop local movement being propagated and utilized mainly by white, upper-class citizens living in mainly urban areas.
What about Ann Arbor?
In most college towns, grocery shopping is relegated to a Kroger, Trader Joe’s, Target, or occasional Whole Foods. The average college student in America likely doesn’t knowingly shop locally or make an effort to support local farms. In Ann Arbor, however, large populations of students shop for food locally.
This is largely due to the easily accessible Ann Arbor Farmers Market and popular Argus Farm Stop. Additionally, Washtenaw County houses 14 farmers markets throughout the year, making farm fresh produce abundantly available to the college campus. Lauren Owens, a current University of Michigan junior, shops locally because she “knows exactly where her food is coming from, can ask questions about how they grow things and where they source things from, while supporting small farmers instead of large corporation farms.”
The Ann Arbor Farmers Market is 102 years old, and home to over 120 vendors of produce, meats, cheeses, baked goods, and other homemade products. Some of these vendors even accept tokens that the market exchanges SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) cards for, making it easier for lower income neighborhood members to get fresh, healthy foods, and support local businesses. The farmers market is year round, giving space for vendors to sell their product annually, and not just in warmer seasons.
Tasty Bakery is one of the vendors at the market weekly, selling gluten free, soy free, and corn free products with dairy free and vegan options available as well. One of the reasons to shop locally is to be able to ask about ingredients and cooking processes—for those who struggle with allergies and intolerances, having locally produced allergen free goods relieves stress about eating. University of Michigan junior Ella Bricker, who is gluten free and dairy free, says, “Buying food and groceries is stressful enough without having an allergy or food intolerance, so feeling like a store actively wants to provide options like gluten free and dairy free products makes me feel taken care of and increases the chances of me coming back to the store in the future.”
Tasty Bakery is not only a weekly participant at the farmers market, but can be found in many local coffee shops and stores, including Argus Farm Stop. Argus Farm Stop provides a place where local farmers can sell their food year round. Their two locations on Packard and West Liberty use a consignment model, where farmers receive 70% of the profit from sales, in comparison to 15 cents on the dollar in traditional retail environments. Argus Farm Stop helps to bolster the local economy while cutting down on food waste and creating space for dialogue on sustainability.
Brian Barch, market manager at the Packard location, discussed why their produce lasts longer, lowering levels of food waste on the part of the consumer. In typical grocery stores, produce can spend days traveling thousands of miles in the practice of processing and packaging; at Argus, fresh food arrives daily from the farms. So, while the prices might be a bit higher than at a grocery chain, the food can last up to two weeks in the fridge.
Barch estimates that upwards of 50% of the customers at Argus Farm Stop Market and Cafe on Packard are students who reside in the surrounding neighborhood. Because of Argus’s location in an area with a large athlete population, they are deeply impacted by Michigan’s Fueling Blue program, which provides athletes with stipends to spend on food. These stipends are for use at local businesses, so many athletes stop by Argus almost daily to pick up breakfast, coffee, snacks, and groceries. This is one way that the university promotes and encourages student local shopping, and fuels the local economy.
Through word of mouth, Argus Cafe on Packard has become a prominent study spot for students. Barch remarks that “on Football Saturdays, part of the experience of coming to Ann Arbor is a field trip stop to Argus on the way to the stadium.”
Trend or new norm?
For Barch, being a part of the Argus community drastically impacted how he views food and food sources, giving him an outlet for his passion for sustainability and localization within a career focused on fostering connection and increasing community awareness. Barch describes how “Argus brings in events about locally sourced food, mixing food and fun with education.”
Shopping locally is definitely here to stay, especially for those who are already conscious of their consumption choices. However, it will be interesting to see how the local food shopping movement expands based on its other benefits, like longer lasting produce, tighter community ties, and proximity to neighborhoods.
While this trend will definitely be normalized over time in larger cities and towns, its manifestation across the country in rural areas is impossible, unless the government gets involved and provides subsidies in an attempt to bolster regional economic growth. Pile says, “I will continue to shop locally in Ann Arbor, but when I am home in Tennessee I can’t always. It’s hard to break out of local systems of consumption.”
Argus Farm Stop photo by Dora Usdan