Bartering for Food: Would You Do It?

Or maybe a better question is have you ever done it? Everyone's looking for ways to save money and trim down the food budget these days. Maybe it's time to return to the barter system...

Bartering simply means exchanging one kind of goods or services for another kind of goods or services. We're familiar with the concept, of course, but finding ways to apply it to our modern lives can feel awkward.

Farmshares and CSAs provide a good model to start from. As part of many of CSA agreements, we spend time working on the farm itself. This is exchanging labor for food. Neighborhood co-ops where working in the store is traded for a discount on their food works as another obvious example.

We could also see starting to barter more within our neighborhood community. We could do food swaps (as in the picture above), or trade excess produce from backyard gardens for services like car repair, an hour of yard work, or even knitting a wool cap. We could also offer to cook meals for someone in exchange for use of their lawn mower or access to a parking space.

An independent bookstore in our area has started holding a monthly "Recession Party." This is swiftly becoming a place where people can connect and talk about things like bartering for food and services. We love this idea and hope to see similar community forums start becoming more popular.

Does anyone have any other ideas or stories about bartering successes?

(For the locals, the store mentioned above is Rhythm & Muse Bookstore, 470 Centre Street, in Jamaica Plain, MA. The next party is Friday, 2/27, and all are welcome!)

(Image: Flickr member London Permaculture licensed under Creative Commons)

Comments (12)

Just remember, bartering still constitutes taxable income. So you still have to include it on your tax return!

How is bartering goods income? You are exchanging one item for another, presumably of equal value.

Renata, it's income in the same way that your take home pay is income, even if you spend it all. There is a minimum transaction value, if I remember correctly, so you don't really have to worry about small stuff. However, IANAA (I Am Not An Accountant!)

Another similar system is "citydollars" or "cityscript", where localities set up an exchange system. Our farmers' market does something like this, where shoppers can get tokens at the main organizers' booth (including by credit card) and the individual farmers exchange them for real money at the end of the day. Very handy when someone has brought something unexpected and delicious! And no one else has to worry about taking credit or checks.

I'm a big fan of bartering, especially for food.

http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/weekend-meditation/weekend-meditation-trading-chickens-for-shoes-062834

The River Cottage tv series from Great Britain is all about bartering as part of the rural economy. Pork bellies for cider, a days labor for an arm full of fresh-killed pheasants. Seems like a good way to live to me. But it's true, it's hard to tax such exchanges, so I suspect bartering will remain an underground activity for the most part.

I wouldn't worry about claiming it as taxable income. It all depends on how you frame it. If I give you lemons and you give me oranges, we can say we each gave each other a gift from our excess produce.

I don't have anything to barter since I live in a metropolis and don't have a garden, but I'd do it if I did have something to offer.

Running a test kitchen and being married to a restauranteur, this concept is pretty familiar to me! I'm always trying to get rid of food at the end of the day and I have, indeed, made the offers conditional. An example, "I'll drop dinner off at your house if you'll drive my kid to karate when you take yours."

My mom and I often food swap leftovers, too. It makes everything old to one person, new again!

http://danamccauley.wordpress.com

Last year, a few of my friends started bartering... one was roasting his own coffee beans, another was baking bread and another was making homemade sausages. Every couple weeks they would share the wealth. It wasn't sustainable over the long term but I've been meaning to start it up again and offer up baked goods and/or candies.

I have all of the River Cottage cookbooks. I wish they would broadcast the show in the US.

there is a site called www.foodbarter.com that looks interesting...

I make 100% whole wheat bread from wheat I grind fresh. I sometimes barter it for home-grown fresh fruit and vegetables, and occasionally haircuts. I always offer to let them try a loaf before they decide whether they want to barter for it. I have also offered to babysit in exchange for fresh fruit and vegetables, but so far everyone has wanted the bread.

there is a new neighborhood meal swapping website called heyfood.org. Currenly me and 30 friends participate in a weekly meal swap and we organize it with www.heyfood.org.

We each feature what food we will bring to the swap online before the swap so we can plan who we want to swap food with at the future food swap. This way we know what food we will be receiving and how many portions we should cook and bring to the swap. After the swap we all come home with all kinds of delicious meals to eat during the busy work week.