A Taste of the Food and the City Round Table

On Saturday January 24 at 3:15 the Frederick S. Pardee Center is co-sponsoring the closing roundtable session for the two-day conference ‘Food and the City: Issues on the Horizon.’ Pardee director ad interim, Dr. James McCann will chair the roundtable event that will include comments by Pardee Faculty Fellows Dr. Sarah Philips, (History), Dr. Nathan Philips, (Geography), and  Pardee Faculty Fellow Paul McManus, (Management) This closing session will offer summary comments on the relationship between food and cities though history and discuss the Conference’s implications for  future directions of food in the urban setting.

The relationship between the geography of food and the city is one that our own city, Boston, has been developing for quite some time, as is evident in this 1903 magazine piece, ‘With a Boston Market Man,’ from the Bay State Monthly. The author follows the journey and experience during a visit to Quincy Market of a resident of the “suburban” town of Billerica. For a taste of what can be expecting at the conference, below is an excerpt describing that market vistor’s breakfast time.

“It is now nine o’clock and quiet begins to settle down. Few teams are passing, and buyers are not numerous. Famers begin to visit with their neighbors, talk about the crops, the price of milk, methods of tillage, scientific feeding, and even politics are not eschewed. In fact, at times the market becomes a veritable “Farmer’s Institute.”

With the growing quiet we begin to feel the need of breakfast. John speaks to his next neighbor, a total stranger, asks him to look after his load, names the lowest price at which he may sell, and we go to breakfast.  The horses have been fed in the morning by the stable man. On a quick market John would have sold out long ago. Some have done so and pulled out for home. Other teams have come to take their places, and as this is the height of the season the going and coming with continue all day long.

Through the middle of the day customer are straggling. Farmers are tired of the business, and this is the opportunity for the hucksters. As a rule the farmers do not love them because they beat down so unmercifully, but John regards them as the salvation of the market. They are here now to buy at the lowest price, and they will buy anything id they can make anything out of it. Having bought they must sell, and if the market is glutted they must tempt customers by selling very low.”

The PDF of the full article is available here.