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 for Food: Would You Do It?
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!)
Related: Fallen Fruit: A Collaborative Community Project
(Image: Flickr member London Permaculture licensed under Creative Commons)
Tags
GREEN IDEAS, Food Politics, Conscientious Cook, Frugality, recession, barter, bartering food, food exchange, food swapShare
Comments (8)
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Just remember, bartering still constitutes taxable income. So you still have to include it on your tax return!
view Lexo's profile
How is bartering goods income? You are exchanging one item for another, presumably of equal value.
view renata's profile
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.
view RebeccaCT's profile
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.
view Dana V's profile
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.
view Orchid64's profile
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
view Dana McCauley's profile
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.
view kitchenplay's profile
I have all of the River Cottage cookbooks. I wish they would broadcast the show in the US.
view JudiAU's profile