Lots of terminology gets tossed around these days to describe the various means of production and distribution of our foods. Some people think that the business of feeding ourselves has become too industrialized and that global competition and the need for ever-increasing efficiency in food production has led us down a troublesome path.

There is a great deal of advocacy toward simplifying and purifying the processes involved in growing fruits and vegetables, raising our food animals, and creating the products that find their way to our kitchens. Increasing demands for ‘organic,’ ‘low-fat,’ ‘hormone-free,’ ‘grass-fed,’ ‘sustainable,’ ‘locally produced,’ and just plain ‘healthy’ foods have altered the landscape of our food marketplaces.

Some Public Markets strive to limit their offerings to these perceived higher-value products and to host only vendors that produce and deal in goods that achieve certain standards of quality. Others are happy to accommodate a wider range of merchants and resellers.

At PublicMarkets.com we appreciate the great variety of vendors and consumers that participate in food commerce and we embrace the fact that there is much diversity in the products and preferences in the Markets. We’ll do our best to let you know if there is a distinct ‘food culture’ in a particular Public Market or if there are limits to certain types of vendors or products, but we’ll try to avoid judgment; we love them all!