Houston’s Inner Loop encompasses approximately 100 square miles located directly around the City center. Most people will agree that it is within this area that Houston feels metropolitan. Uptown (the Galleria Area) aside, the Inner Loop has two large financial centers, boutique shopping, the best restaurants in the City, a pretty healthy night life, and more farmers markets than one could care to, as my grandpa would say, “shake a stick at.”

Bayou City Farmer's Market

Within this 100 square mile area, Houston has five farmers markets within 10 square miles of each other! I’m not really sure why we have such a large concentration in such a small area. The problem I’m sure, dates back many years. Probably, something really bad went down, perhaps between two farming families that had always been friends and had booths next to each other at the farmer’s market that THEY founded seven decades ago. Then, one Saturday morning while setting up, Farmer Baker noticed Farmer Smith hanging a freshly painted sign touting his new sustainable organic produce. Being the self-righteuos farmer that Farmer Smith was, he of course chided Farmer Baker’s methods, mumbling something about killing the planet. The situation quickly escalated to fisticuffs when he called Farmer Baker’s kid a “Miracle Gro Baby”. Offended, Farmer Baker’s wife even threw a handful of conventional fertilizer in Farmer Smith’s face while he was bent over, getting the mess beat out of him—not saying that organic farmers are wusses or anything, its just that Farmer Baker was a really big dude. After the pitch forks were confiscated, it was decided that the best thing for everyone was for each to just go their separate ways.

This wasn’t the first or the last time the vitriol of bitter farmers got the best of a situation. It seems like Houston Farmer’s Markets split more times than your typical small-town, Southern Baptist Church. The problem in Houston though, for the consumer, is that to get everything that one would like to purchase at the market(s), one would have to go to four or five different places during any given week. Yeah, that sounds like a whole lot of fun. I can’t actually cook anything in the evenings because I have to go to fifteen different places to buy…whatever.

Most often, Stacey and I wind up at the Bayou City Farmers Market, sponsored by Urban Harvest. Urban Harvest is a rockin’ organization that holds all sorts of informative classes throughout the year. Their Saturday morning market appeals to us mostly because it seems to be the largest and consistently has the best selection of produce and meat. Even still, it could benefit from a ‘coming together’ of other vendors from the various farmer’s markets across town.

Farmer's Market Creminis

I’m sure I’m barking up a naïve tree to think that the situation could be seriously examined, but in the end, it is both the farmer and the consumer that gets the raw deal. Small farms who are concerned with quality over quantity must, from my perspective, rely on farmer’s markets to make a living. Although Whole Foods and Central Market do a fairly decent job of bringing in local products, they don’t come close to the potential of the local farmer selling goods that were picked or processed the day of or the day before the sale. Since we found the Bayou City Farmers Market a little over a year ago, it has increasingly become more popular. It blows my mind to think about the synergy that could take place if everyone could just put their issues aside and come together for the betterment of all.