3.5 Data Collection
4.7.3 Shelf Life
Unlike Josephine, Amanda is not in a hurry to clear her stock of oatcakes before the market closes. “If I don’t sell them this week, I can take them home and sell them next week. It’s not a big deal at all,” she explains to me. “In fact, I had a pack that was vacuum packed for a year and it was absolutely perfectly
fine. So I’m really lucky like that,” she tells me. Unlike the hummus man from last week, “it had been a really slow market,” Amanda tells me, “so he was walking around with arm loads of hummus just giving us all hummus because you know, it’s a perishable product. So that would be hard,” she empathises, “I couldn’t handle that”. Frank tells me about another reason he doesn’t need to sell through the supermarkets. “It (the muesli) will be preserved, it doesn’t need refrigeration. If it doesn’t sell this week, it sells next week, or next month,” he explains. “I don’t need to sell,” he argues. “So many people talk about the hassles with supermarkets, the distribution chains and the discounting and to some extent, they’re losing control. I can understand the necessity for some items that have a limited shelf life or that need refrigeration to be in the supermarket…but not for me”.
4.7.4 Discussion
As market day comes to an end we can see the different levels of time and physical labour required among stallholders in their pursuits for value realisation. At this stage, in attempts to uplift the value of their time, labour, and capital commitments, we see producers engaging in social interactions exhibiting desperate hopes of extracting a maximum amount of value out of market day. On the other hand, we see how the value extraction process requires significantly less effort for others. This section will discuss the different levels of activity farmers market participants undertake in hopes of capturing the value they need in order for their businesses and for the farmers market as a retail outlet to remain economically viable.
The significant investment of capital required by Josephine and her husband to purchase the wholesale pies means it is imperative that they sell as many as they can. In this instance we can see how desperate efforts to realise a return on their investment involve the price of their product dropping far below an amount that reflects the time, labour, and capital that was committed to providing it. Here, a significant amount of economic value is lost within the farmers market. However, this example shows how with the loss in economic value for the producer, the consumer has the potential to uplift significantly more economic and symbolic value. Again, a redistribution of value is occurring where the value of efforts exerted by these small-scale food producers is being redistributed to others. In this case, attempts by the stallholder to recover capital investments, have allowed consumers to realise economic value in the form of monetary savings. Here, the consumer has the potential to realise more economic value than they would have done had they purchased the pie for its original sale price. Similarly, the consumer has the potential to co-create and realise significantly more symbolic value as a result of their consumption practices. By offering the product for a lower price to the consumer, the producer is able to co-create value in the form of symbolic meaning with the consumer. As a result of economic savings offered by the producer, the consumer is able to attribute significantly more meaning to the pie when they believe it will provide them with more value than the monetary amount they exchange for it. Often associating themselves with a lower socio-economic demographic, the pie vendors here struggle to create enough economic value to ensure their livelihoods.
Here, we might suggest that a relatively unfair distribution of value is occurring in what is depicted to be a socially sustainable food system. However, some may suggest that the conventional food system redistributes value even more unfairly when wholesalers and retailers capture significantly high proportions of value created by producers. Here, stallholders such as Josephine are perhaps, as Frank describes, ‘losing control’, or at least a portion of control when they engage in activities such as price discounting, activities that have become the socially accepted norm in conventional food systems.
The other significant factor evident in this example is the physical exhaustion experienced by stallholders in their pursuit of value. In this case the physical exhaustion for Josephine exemplifies her desperate efforts to uplift economic value as market day comes to a close. Even her daughter agrees that with the amount of time and effort required to run a market stall, “your income really does whittle away” (p. 77). Yet, for Josephine’s husband, not being able to stay away from the farmers market on market day even though “he’s too tired (and) he can’t manage it all” (p. 77), exemplifies his need for relational value. On market day, this gap is fulfilled for Josephine’s husband when he is able to come to the market and interact with family and friends. Here, the researcher has validated both situations. Through my own personal physical exhaustion I can see the significant amount of effort required in running a market stall. Yet, I return week after week to continue helping out simply because I enjoy the relational aspect of being at the farmers market. In this sense, the farmers market has helped to fulfil my own need for relational value when it comes to purchasing and consuming food, a need that is not met by the conventional food system. For stallholders such as Josephine and her husband, the end of market day largely represents the struggles they face when trying to uplift an equitable amount of value for the time, labour, and capital they have committed, whether this is in economic, symbolic, or relational form.
Physical exhaustion is also shown in Allison’s experiences of the end of market day. Similarly, physical exhaustion for Allison’s husband is also evident. In the case of Allison’s husband, we can see how physical labour requirements extend beyond the ‘front stage’ activities at the farmers market stall, to ‘backstage’ (Goffman, 1959) activities of family members who are not even present on market day. However, compared to the case discussed above, Allison’s husband’s physical labour is largely representative of his need to maintain the symbolic meaning associated with his honey. For Allison and her husband, the success of their business is largely dependent upon the reputation they have built through selling at the farmers market. Here, continuing to exert so much physical effort and perhaps exploiting himself in his old age, Allison’s husband is able to keep some form of control over production activities and therefore maintain not only the business’s reputation but also his own reputation as a ‘successful’ beekeeper. For the beekeepers, this phase largely represents the demanding nature of the physical labour required in order to maintain a desired level of symbolic value.
From the final example in this phase, we can see how the end of market day differs for producers such as Amanda and Frank who are not desperate to clear their stock. Due to its relatively long shelf life, these producers do not need to discount their prices, which means they can ensure a fair price for the time, labour, and capital they commit in producing their products, no matter when they are sold. When she compares herself to the ‘hummus man’, saying, “I couldn’t handle that” (p. 78), Amanda is communicating how for her, the farmers market facilitates a relatively easy distribution strategy. Selling through the farmers market allows Amanda to realise an equitable amount of economic value without having to engage in price discounting or ‘hard sales’, of which she had an initial fear. Symbolic value is evident here in the form of Amanda’s desire to not engage heavily in the sales aspect of the farmers market, or in price discounting and negotiation activities which she would likely experience if she was distributing through the conventional system. Here, we can see how the effort Amanda exerts, particularly in her drive up to Clevedon from Thames each week, is offset by the economic and symbolic value she is able to realise when she uses the farmers market as a retail outlet. Frank’s case reveals similar findings, yet for him, this phase is largely representative of his symbolic desire to remain in control of his business by not engaging with the conventional system. For producers such as Amanda and Frank, this phase largely represents how the farmers market facilitates a relatively easy distribution strategy where their efforts are outweighed by the economic and symbolic value they are able to uplift when participating in the market. At this stage, the farmers market acts simply as a convenient retail outlet for these producers to sell their products with extensive shelf life. Interestingly, the presence of commodities with extensive shelf life is one of the frequently debated merits of conventional supermarkets.
Together, the cases presented in this phase exemplify the convenience of the farmers market as a viable retail outlet for small-scale food producers. However, for some, much more time, significantly more physical labour, and a higher investment of capital is required in order to realise the potential benefits this site of exchange can provide. Here, the findings of the study reveal that the potential for economic, symbolic, and relational surpluses can often far outweigh the time, labour, and capital commitments required in order to run a farmers market stall. For some stallholders, the potential economic and relational surpluses outweigh their time, labour, and capital commitments and we may suggest they are realising an equitable amount of value in some forms. However, an equitable surplus may not be realised by all producers. For stallholders such as the pie sellers who may not realise high economic surpluses, the potential symbolic and relational value surpluses appear to outweigh their time, labour, and capital investments and potential loss of economic value.