Farmer's Market Visit

This week in sustainable agriculture we took a small field trip to the Marin Farmers market, located at the Town Center Mall. At the venue there were a variety of different market stands with assortments or different food. We also had the honor and pleasure of speaking with the co-founder of the Marin farmers market, Lynn. She talked to use about all the nuances that go into having a successful farmers market. In this particular picture, it shows a picture of a market stand by Rodriguez Farms. They primarily grow, pick and sell strawberries. When we asked them about their picking process they explained to us that they have close to 60 pickers at the farm and only have two genders at the market. This allows them to increase profits by having more people at the farm picking to get more strawberries on a daily basis. We also talked to many other market stands and when we came in contact with J and J Ramos farms we learned about their way of extracting bugs. They use a machine that goes over all of the plants and is a vacuum. It sucks all the bugs into the vacuum, extracting them away from the plants where they could eat and eventually lower the overall yield. This also plays a large role in the environmental impacts this has. Instead of using pesticides, which are proven to be very harmful to the environment, they use the vacuum which is much more sustainable on a farm setting.          - Zack Gordon