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As food retail giants such as Loblaw and Walmart announce price hikes in the coming months due to recent tariffs — with Loblaw naming natural foods and pantry staples among the tax-affected items — now, more than ever, we should support farmers’ markets. Domestic farms are largely uninfluenced by the trade war, as they sell what they grow and source locally for supplies.

Sadly, we rarely visit our local market. A 2025 on markets in B.C. found that these sites make up just 0.5 per cent of household food budgets. Even though we recognize how vendor prices can often be the same as or lower than grocery products, as this same study noted, we still don’t prioritize a weekly visit to stock up on staples that will soon cost a lot more at grocers.

Still, those of who shop at farmers’ markets are in the IYKYK (if you know, you know) club. There’s nothing like a basket of strawberries harvested within a three-hour drive of where that farmer is standing or finding the perfect cut of a lamb chop you couldn’t spot on grocery shelves. It’s not a transaction, as much as it sounds like it literally; a visit to the market brings the shopper closer to the hands digging in the soil, a gap that increasingly widens as more corporate concentration in Big Food/Ag pushes us away from that intimacy.

We don’t wander booth to booth at a market simply to shop, but also to see neighbours and friends. The B.C. study found that half of these visitors spend over 30 minutes there, with much of that time socializing.

At Wychwood Barns, brimming with more than 40 vendors, I’m chatting with farmers about what they recommend, what’s ideal for someone trying to eat low-sugar food (and often failing). I bump into an old friend who tells me about a particularly tasty wheel of old cheddar she bought from a cheesemonger 30 steps away, and moments later I run into É«É«À² spoken word icon Lillian Allen as she surveys a buffet of apples, pears, carrots and zucchinis.

The shopping experience doesn’t have to be a chore. Folk musicians and kids’ entertainers pepper farmers’ markets in the GTA, from the Evergreen Brick Works to Dufferin Grove to Scarborough’s Rosebank Park. When the weather is just right, you can’t ever picture wandering again amid the neon blindness of an overly lit Farm Boy.

Farmers’ markets also give you an opportunity to try food you’ve never had before. At Brick Works on a recent Saturday, I bought dumplings filled with ostrich meat (tasty but a bit tough) and my partner sampled tapioca crepes.

If farmers’ markets can foster organic community and open-mindedness that comes from simply being hungry to buy fresh, local food, they’ve done half their job. The other half comes with our help — a market vendor has to make a living to continue driving into the GTA and spending six hours trying to sell us beef steaks packed tight into an iced cooler.

We can’t just hope grocery store prices flatten at some point. This summer, we should turn our attention to farmers’ markets who often take a hit for us: During the pandemic, Canadian farmers often absorbed the added costs incurred during the global supply chain crisis instead of passing those costs down to consumers and hiking prices, as the Conversation in data from 2018 to 2023.

Markets choose customer relationships over profits, but they need us to notice that sacrifice.

Over the past few months, we’ve turned to Canadian alternatives of our favourite U.S. brands. It’s time to once again brandish our patriotic pride, put our dollars where our elbows are and support these passionate curators of a resilient food system we want to see thrive in the coming decades.