I am starting to believe that none of the fluff and slogans of “buy local” really means much. There are all of these farmer’s markets around the area that are advertised as local food sources and it turns out that is a lot of nonsense.

I walked into a farmers market, and I will withhold the name for now, and everything there came from afar. Grapes, berries, fruit all from Mexico and Chile, and there were strawberries from Oregon, California and Mexico. Apples from New Zealand and oranges from Central American countries along with the usual bananas were in open boxes.

Lettuce and radishes from California, New Mexico and Texas with all sorts of tomatoes that I passed by for fear of getting sick eating them had people picking through them.

In all there were no items of local origin here from the state of Washington, including Snohomish County and I suspect that’s true everywhere because of the seasonal nature of agricultural production. I did notice cherries that were marked “early crop” but an investigation of the box they came in revealed that they did not come from Wenatchee but again California.

So, unless you are living in some fantasy land and believe these fancy inserts in the newspapers these days, you are in for a major disappointment because there ain’t no local produce to buy at any of these places I visited.

Bob Clark

Monroe