The original farmers market in LA was in West LA. It was started as a small community hub of a few farmers within a few miles away selling produce to some of the dispersed Los Angelenos. Today, the market is commercialized and features grocery-store-like fare to the upper crest echelons of LA. You won’t see images like these in markets like those.
The “new” market is a promenade built up by a lucrative development project that saw an opportunity in a few produce trucks brought in by farmers and lined up to sell to the passerby. The long lost ambitions founded by linking the producer with the consumer in urban areas, bringing the farm to the city in a way, has morphed into a commercial enterprise impenetrable to the small farmers of today and unaffordable to the urbanites who need fresh produce the most. The original farmers market has been lost from its origins. Restaurants and high priced produce, glossed and flossed, line interior boulevards that lead to a high-end shopping mall featuring Nike and Sephora stores. Many LA transplants revel in this burlesque style farmers market, but I find it overwhelming and utterly disconnected from it’s original purpose-undeserving of being called a “farmers market” and definitely not contributing to the urban agriculture movement.
