I was immediately reminded of the famous sacred heart of Jesus art as soon as I started reading the part where customers were interviewed, and one said they liked shopping at farmer's markets because they wanted to touch the hand of who grew the food. It is kind of weird, wouldn't the customer think that the vendor's hand is too soft to be laborer in the field and realize someone else was responsible for the labor?
At first, I did not really understand what the author meant when they said that agriculture is fetishized, but I think I understand it well. I think it is super similar to many Christian art/children's books where Jesus is painted as a white man, sometimes even with blonde hair. I think a lot of modern religious artists are straying from this ideology and are painting Jesus with skin tones and facial features realistic to where he was from, but I can only hope that farmers markets like the ones Alkon mentioned can gradually adopt the same strategy.
I see how it is fetishized, but I do not know how to fix it. Individual stands at these farmers markets are scared of the possibility of losing business if they start telling customers that immigrant workers plucked their fruits and vegetables and that they are just standing there to sell them.
I love farmers markets and have eaten some of the best baked goods at them. It is sad to hear of the dilemma that many of these markets face.
1 comment:
Declan, I love how you explain this prominent issue. Although it is a terrible thing to hear that not everyone is being able to access farmers markets and become vendors within them, it really puts things into perspective while reading this. Like I mentioned in my post, I have only really ever seen white people running the booths at the markets I went to, but never pieced together that it may be because of injustice. I didn't realize just how fetishized the idea of white farmers are in the industry, causing the rejection of immigrant and black farmers in these places.
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