Farmers markets in the US

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as Americans have collectively decided to buy their heirloom tomatoes from a person named Derek who grows them in his actual yard, their children have simultaneously abandoned the soccer field, baseball diamond, and competitive jump rope circuit with what can only be described as coordinated precision. One might have expected these trends to move in opposite directions, or indeed in no direction whatsoever, having nothing to do with one another beyond existing in the same country during overlapping years. Instead, they have achieved a negative correlation of 0.979, which is the statistical equivalent of two unrelated people arriving at the same bus stop at exactly the same moment, every single time, for fifteen years straight.

What appears to be happening, and this is where it gets genuinely interesting, is that both trends are probably passengers in the same larger vehicle: the transformation of American life around food culture and leisure time economics. As farmers markets expanded from 1,755 locations in 2008 to over 8,000 by 2020, families were investing not just money but Saturday mornings into this new way of shopping, and Saturday mornings are precisely when youth sports happen. Economic cycles matter too—the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recovery shaped how families spent discretionary income, and youth sports participation fees have become genuinely punishing, easily reaching 1,000 to 3,000 dollars per child per season by the end of this period. Meanwhile, farmers markets require almost nothing but time and a certain kind of commitment that appears to have crowded out the commitment required to drive your daughter to soccer practice in three different towns.

We live in a time when two entirely unrelated aspects of American life have learned to dance together, which tells us something both funny and mildly unsettling about how our choices cascade through the statistical record. The correlation is almost certainly meaningless, and yet here we are, holding this peculiar truth about farmers markets and youth sports between 2008 and 2022. The patterns we find are usually just us.