Are those local farmers' markets a good thing?

We've got a farmer's market in town. It sets up shop once a week, and I've been there once. This idea has become something of a fad everywhere. I guess the idea is that you get very fresh produce, and you also get to pretend that you're saving the plant by buying broccoli not trucked from California.

Well ...

According to The New York Times: A surprising investigation by the local NBC affiliate in Los Angeles discovered several examples of false claims at various Southern California farmers’ markets, including a vendor who purchased boxes of produce from wholesale produce warehouses, including items grown on big commercial farms as far away as Mexico.

So how do you know?

Operators of farmers markets we spoke to suggest shoppers get to know vendors they buy from, and ask them a lot of questions. Ask for the exact location of the farm where the produce is grown. If they claim their produce is “pesticide free,” ask them what methods they use to control pests on their crops. Ask exactly when the produce was picked. If the farmer can’t give you specific answers, or seems unwilling to answer your questions, market operators say you should walk away.

The Wall Street Journal weighs in with another perspective on the local markets: Patronizing local farmers who produce in small batches tends to cost more. You may find some peak-season bargains at the farmers' market, but there's no such thing as a free locavore lunch. Virginia Postrel writes:

The locavore ideal is a world without trade, not only beyond national borders but even from the next state: no Florida oranges in Colorado or California grapes in New Mexico, no Vidalia onions in New York or summer spinach in Georgia.

Fully realized, that ideal would eliminate one of the great culinary advances of the past half century. Unripe peaches notwithstanding, today's supermarket produce departments are modern marvels. American grocery shoppers have choices that would have been unimaginable only a few decades ago. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the only way to get fresh spinach or leaf lettuce was to plant a garden. Avocados were an exotic treat, asparagus came in a can, and pomegranates existed only in books.

Now my neighborhood supermarket sells five types of lettuce, plus spinach, endive, escarole, radicchio, frisée, rapini, three kinds of chard, mustard greens, dandelion greens and kale. That's not including all the cabbages—or, of course, the prewashed salads in a bag that have particularly boosted fresh-spinach purchases. In this ordinary produce department, you can buy not only avocados, asparagus and pomegranates, but everything from purple baby cauliflowers to spiky kiwano melons that look like some kind of scary deep-sea creature. Need portobello mushrooms, Japanese eggplant or organic ginger at 2 a.m.? The store is open 24/7.

The most important thing, in my opinion, is how close to the door you can park.

How to save money at the grocery store

My grocery shopping strategy is fairly complex: I buy cereal and ice cream if they're on sale. The rest is serendipity.

To get the sale price you have to have one of those cards. Nobody knows why. If the supermarket chain uses the data to make my life better I don't know about it. I don't actually carry a card. I just tell the clerk something. Like, the dog ate my card. Or, a terrorist stole my card. They run one through for me.

I doubt you'll need any better advice than that, but if you do, here's some from SmartMoney:

Shop ahead
Most brands are discounted just once during a 12-week sales cycle, says Teri Gault, the founder of shopping site The Grocery Game. The prices of seasonal items, like BBQ sauce in the summer, and competitive categories, such as cereal and soda, are cut more frequently. If you’re brand loyal, check the sales circular against what’s currently in the pantry. It’s better to buy a jar of Skippy peanut butter on sale this week than at full price two weeks from now when you’ve run out, Gault says.

Do some cooking prep
Stephanie Nelson, the founder of The Coupon Mom, has a five-minute rule for buying precut foods such as bagged lettuce and sliced carrots: If she can do the work herself within that time, buying the cheaper raw produce is a better deal. “You’ll pay three times the price for bagged lettuce as for a head of lettuce,” she says.

Explore the store
Check all the locations within the store for where a particular item on your list might be found. For example, cheese can be purchased from the cheese counter, the deli and the dairy case, Lempert says. “Wisconsin cheddar is Wisconsin cheddar no matter where you buy it, but it’s cheaper in the dairy case,” he says. Compare prices at the seafood counter against those in the freezer case. Most items at the counter are “freshly frozen,” meaning they were frozen and have been defrosted, he says. Out-of-season produce is also likely to be cheaper -- and tastier -- in the freezer section.

Watch for store sale tricks
“Don’t assume anything [about store sales],” Lempert says. Stores have twice as many unadvertised sale items as they place in the weekly circular, so it can pay to pay attention while wandering the aisles. However, shoppers should stay keen. Aisle displays are less likely to point to items on sale than they are to pinpoint items the store wants sold, he says. Also, check the fine print: A four-for-$3 deal on cans of tuna fish may or may not require you to buy four to get the sale price.

Check unit prices
“Don’t assume that the bigger package is always the better deal,” Nelson says. The Federal Trade Commission found that larger size packages of tuna fish, peanut butter, ketchup, coffee and frozen orange juice were often more expensive per unit than smaller counterparts. Crunch the numbers before you buy, especially if you have a coupon.

One thing SmartMoney isn't smart enough to think of: if you hit the sample tables enough times, you can skip buying dinner.