Our food friends up in NYC have developed Smorgasbord, a Brooklyn Food Flea Market. Not sure how I feel about the association with flea markets--their "catch as catch can", of-varying-quality connotation, but I'm excited to see how Smorgasbord is focusing their effort on being the connective tissue between the regional growers, purveyors and producers who are concerned with food access, nutrition and sustainable growing practices. Instead of waiting for policy makers to make connections and do something about it, local experts are seeing both a philosophical and economic opportunity to provide an alternative to the current marketing structure that usually keeps these groups separated. Smorgasbord is offering a nice glimpse of a bottoms-up, systemic approach to local food production and distribution. Given their claim of building a democratic approach to eating and buying food, I'll be interested to see how they reach out to different consumers communities as their project evolves. They're not explicit how their established market place will be able reach as many people as possible.
In their words:
"Here are our goals with Smorgasburg: directly connect local/NYC purveyors with regional farmers/producers; make good, fresh, affordable food accessible to as many people as possible; provide purveyors and farmers with a platform to sustain their businesses; and create a market that makes eating and buying food fun, democratic, and easy."
Good luck Smorgasbord!
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