I am passionate, passionate about saving our environment for
future generations, passionate about ensuring the survival of local food
sources and passionate about ensuring the food my family eats is absolutely
healthy.
I do not buy food from supermarkets because I, like many
consumers today, don’t trust them.
Supermarkets often store food in cold storage for up to nine months and
then bring it out and tell their shoppers it is fresh. It isn’t fresh. It has no flavour and the vitamin content of
the food has been massively reduced during its months of storage. The fruit and vegetables are old, stale and
tasteless. In the past i have purchased
fruit from supermarkets that 24 hours after purchase had turned brown with
rot. I won’t buy supermarket produce any
more. As far as I am concerned
supermarkets tell me lies when they try to convince me their produce is fresh. They don’t care about my family’s health,
they only care about making a profit. I
care about my familys health.
The challenge is where can I buy fresh, tasty fruit and
vegetables that are packed with the nutrition that nature intended?
Our business has been helping farmers, farm shops and
farmers markets around the world with marketing and management advice on how to
get more of their produce to more of their customers. We have been advising on the best layout of
the store, or market, the most effective marketing techniques to create
awareness of their produce or business and how they can build marketing
strategies to delight their customers.
So the obvious solution to my dilemma on where to buy fresh
local food was to create a farmers market in our local community. That market was created out of a passion for saving
local farmers and getting fresh local food direct to our local community.
The market has been running now for over 12 months, so we have
personally experienced the issues facing farmers, stallholders, market managers
and shoppers.
Through our business, John Stanley Associates, my husband
John has been speaking at farmers markets conferences for many years. Over the past few months we have attended
farmers’ market conferences in Canada, USA and the United Kingdom. Two weeks ago we went on a study tour of
British farm shops prior to a farm conference.
I was devastated!
Many of the farm shops who implied to their customers that they were
selling produce from the farm, or at least local food, were selling biscuits
from Italy, dates from Tunisia, cheese from Colombo, oranges (which obviously don’t
grow in Britain) and other non-local, even imported products.
This week we are working with North American farm shops and
farm markets. I found the same
thing. Farm shops saying to their
customers they sell local produce and there was imported produce, even Chinese
produce on the shelves.
At the American conference trade show, there was companies
there selling jars of pickles, chutneys and preserves that they would put the
farm shop label on. I was
disgusted. They were selling the idea of
deceiving consumers into thinking that the farm shops had made the pickles and
chutneys and preserves themselves.
As a consumer in a farm shop I would take one look at the
range and turn around and walk out. How
can they call themselves farm shops?
They were lying to their shoppers.
In my opinion they have lost their way and are no more trustworthy now
than the supermarkets that I have been personally boycotting for most of my
life.
Since we resigned from the management committee of our own
local farmers’ market, there has been having debates about changing the rules so
that they can bring in resellers, not farmers, into the market.
If farm shops and farm markets are going to sell food
products that are not honestly from local farmers or producers, who can
shoppers trust in the future?
Supermarkets deceive consumers about their produce being fresh, now farm
shops and farmers markets are deceiving consumers about their produce
being local.
Why should consumers shop where the retailer endeavours to
deceive them? Where can shoppers buy
truly local, freshly picked produce from retailers who can actually be trusted
to be supplying what they say they do?
It is no wonder that shoppers are turning more and more to online
shopping. If shoppers are not able to find retailers
that they can trust, frequently get less than wonderful customer service and
are not provided with an amazing shopping experience, then why bother going to
a shop at all? If consumers can search out products online
that will suit their needs and have them delivered to their doorstep then it
seems to me that is the way of the future.
Linda Stanley (Post Graduate Diploma in Business-
Electronic Commerce) set up the Friends of Piesse Brook Inc. conservation group
to remove invasive species from the Kalamunda National Park, successfully
campaigned to have Kalamunda shire become a GM Free zone, set up and directed
for the first 12 months the Kalamunda Farmers Market. Linda works with her husband John in their
business John Stanley Associates (www.johnstanley.com.au)
assisting small businesses to increase their markets and grow their profits.
You can read her blog at www.lindastanley.com.au
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