Summary Of School Bus Farmers Market By Katherine Gustafson

School Bus Farmers’ Market: Farm to Family

In the first chapter of School Bus Farmers’ Market by Katherine Gustafson, she takes her audience, US citizens, alongside her as she accompanies Mark Lilly on his journey to various farms and acreages to gather a variety of produce for which to sell at a market, in the hopes of decreasing the impact the US food system is making. Mark runs a small business named Farm to Family, providing more fresh and local choices to family shoppers. Gustafson’s purpose in the writing of this passage is not to entertain, but to persuade the reader that while some changes are needed to increase the efficiency of the US food system, simply buying local is not the solution. Gustafson’s argument is effective because

She makes known the idea of a “ghastly carbon footprint (Gustafson 658)” left behind when shipping and transporting products. She continues on saying that it is likely that an “eighteen-wheeler semi-truck emits less carbon emissions than an old farm truck (or bus) (Gustafson 658-659)”. Gustafson also examines the thought that by buying local, shoppers may need “to make multiple trips to get everything they need where a grocery center has all of the items one would need, thus not needing to make multiple trips (Gustafson)” which they ordinarily would do. As a result consumers who shop at grocery centers save time, money, and limited resources (fuel). As she rides along with Mark, the mental image of a cloud of carbon emissions (which are coming from the exhaust) lingers in the mind of the reader as they follow her journey. Her strategy in doing so results in the thought that if one bus can produce multiple clouds of emissions, how much carbon emission would there be had it been a fleet of trucks? Gustafson also points out that Farm to Family is not producing any jobs so far. Currently, it is just “one guy with a gas guzzling truck (Gustafson 666)”. If more people were to be employed by Farm to Family, there would be more gas guzzling trucks emitting more pollution into the

According to Mark it “all boils down to money” and that “the government makes laws to benefit them (corporations) rather than to benefit the people” (Gustafson 661). Without directly stating that the government would not allow farmers to take over the food industry, from Mark’s statement, we can deduct the idea that as farmers markets begin to become more popular, there is a high probability that the government will set a limitation on the power farm stands are able to hold over the food system. These limitations can result in lower profits, or even the loss of money. Lastly Gustafson states that “While the concept of a mobile super market” is an “innovative and a hopeful enterprise” she finds it a “cumbersome way to inject local food into the cityscape” (Gustafson 666), and that 0Farm to Family was not quite the sustainability that the food market