Local Markets: Value-added Products at Farmers’ Markets

Abstract

This chapter situates the experiences of women who sell their goods at farmer’s markets into the social and historical context of the region. Southern food culture is rife with gender inequality. Women, whether white or black, were traditionally relegated to labor within the home. This chapter addresses how the resurgence of a culture and subsequent spaces catering to slow and local foods makes it possible to revalue traditional food preparation techniques, specifically farming, canning, and baking from scratch, by placing them into the space of alternative productive relationships and embedding the with value as a form of knowledge and art, instead of isolating them within the exploitive and oppressive space of capitalism.