Paper short abstract:

A community staggered when White supremacists joined farmers market. Better design can make a more just future for local food.

Paper long abstract:

During 50 years of their revival in the United States, farmers' markets have been embraced as recognizable, distributed alternatives to the dominant industrial food system, ones that "cultivate" a sense of community and accountability thought to be dormant (Robinson & Hartenfeld 2007). Farmers' markets have leveraged time-tested practices to respond robustly to crises as novel as 9/11 terrorist attacks, floods, and COVID pandemic food shortages. Simultaneously, they can privilege economic, social, and geographic populations, effectively undoing more lofty ideals. This paper relies on longitudinal ethnographic research to analyze the crisis precipitated in one community in the US Midwest when both these strengths and shortfalls combusted in the face of political and demographic challenge. The decades-long work of advocates, producers, and consumers to create a local food system was leveraged by self-identified "traditionalist" White supremacists who were, in turn, resisted by social justice activists. The fallout, several years on, has been a shattering of the local food community, the shuttering of some farms, and a reimagining of foods' relation to public/private entities. I use Nobelist Elinor Ostrom's institutional design principles for collective action to understand this local crisis and identify institutional characteristics that enable or inhibit individuals from directing and changing institutions. While I test Ostrom's theory for the emerging field of food commons, the implications may aid other anthropologists working on local food movements and smallholder farm networks as well as those interested in opaque private institutions and fragile public ones that may be subject to re-enclosure.