Convenience Is a Dirty Word

How Easy Choices Are Killing Our Farmers

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We love convenience. It’s practically stitched into the fabric of modern life. One-click shopping, same-day delivery, year-round produce, pre-cut salads, drive-thru dinners, and $5 rotisserie chickens. Convenience is sold to us as a gift. Who wouldn’t want to save time, money, and effort?

But what if that “gift” comes at a devastating cost? What if convenience is quietly eroding the very foundation of our food system?

When it comes to food, convenience is a dirty word. And for small farmers, it’s a silent killer.

The Price of “Cheap”

Take that $5 rotisserie chicken at Costco. For most consumers, it’s a steal — a hot meal ready in minutes. But here’s the truth behind the sticker: independent farmers can’t raise a chicken for anywhere near that cost. Feed, land, labor, processing, and humane conditions all add up.

Industrial-scale systems drive the price down by cutting corners that small farmers refuse to cut. The result? Four companies now process over 80% of all U.S. chicken. Farmers raising birds on pasture can’t compete with vertically integrated giants who control everything from hatcheries to slaughterhouses.

When we celebrate convenience at the register, we ignore the farmers who are being priced out of existence.

The Illusion of Seasonless Food

Walk into any supermarket in January and you’ll find strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, and tomatoes — foods that used to signal the joy of spring and summer harvest. Today they’re flown in from across the globe or grown in giant hothouses on substrate.

It feels convenient: fruit whenever we want it. But this convenience distorts our sense of seasonality and erases the value of eating what grows locally, when it grows.

Meanwhile, small berry farmers who nurture soil-grown crops in season face consumers who no longer understand why their berries are more flavorful — and sometimes more expensive. Over 53% of fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. are now imported, a dramatic increase over just a generation ago.

Convenience disconnects us from the rhythms of nature. And farmers pay the price.

The App Problem

Grocery delivery apps like Instacart and Amazon Fresh are booming. In a few taps, dinner ingredients appear on your doorstep. The pandemic accelerated this trend: online grocery sales more than doubled in 2020, and the habit stuck.

But here’s the catch: those apps almost never include your small local farmers. Family farms don’t have the infrastructure, the tech, or the margins to compete on those platforms. Their food — often fresher, more sustainable, and more nourishing — gets left behind while you scroll.

Convenience funnels us toward consolidation. Today, just four companies — Walmart, Kroger, Costco, and Ahold Delhaize — control over 67% of U.S. grocery sales. When small farmers aren’t in that system, they disappear.

The Farmers’ Market Festival Effect

Let’s talk about farmers’ markets. Too often, they’re treated like festivals — fun outings for the family a few times a year. People stroll, taste, maybe take a photo for Instagram, and then go back to buying their weekly groceries at the supermarket.

For small farmers, markets aren’t festivals. They’re lifelines. There are about 8,000 farmers’ markets in the U.S., but most small farms earn less than $50,000 in annual sales. They need consistent weekly shoppers — not occasional visitors — to make their work viable.

When we only “treat ourselves” to the farmers’ market once in a while, we send the message that local food is a luxury, not the foundation of our diets.

Convenience tells us it’s easier to buy everything in one place, even if that place is dominated by corporate retailers. But that “ease” is pushing small farms out of business.

Cheap Eggs, Costly Consequences

Consider eggs. In supermarkets, you’ll see cartons for $1.29, $2.29, maybe “organic” eggs for a few bucks more. Behind those prices are massive industrial barns where hens are packed by the tens of thousands. One case of avian flu, and an entire flock — sometimes millions of birds — must be euthanized. In 2022 alone, 58 million birds were culled due to avian flu outbreaks.

Meanwhile, small flock farmers raising hens on pasture face sky-high feed costs, predators, weather challenges, and fragile margins. They can’t produce eggs for $1.29 — and they shouldn’t have to.

But convenience says cheap eggs are good enough, so we keep choosing them. And in doing so, we chip away at the survival of small farms that are actually stewarding land, animals, and communities.

The True Cost of Convenience

Convenience has trained us to think food should be:

• Always available.

• Always cheap.

• Always easy.

But the truth is, real food isn’t any of those things. It’s hard work. It’s seasonal. It’s unpredictable. It takes labor, love, and care.

Small farmers embody all of that — and they can’t survive if we continue to trade them in for what feels easier in the moment.

What we save in time and money at the grocery store costs us something much greater: resilient local food systems, thriving rural economies, and the health of our land.

Already, America is losing 2,000 acres of farmland every single day — much of it small and mid-sized farms that can’t compete against a convenience-driven system.

Let's Reclaim Our Connection to Our Food

So what do we do? If convenience is a dirty word, what’s the alternative? Connection.

• Buy from your farmers’ market — regularly, not just for the vibe. Make it your grocery store, not just your Saturday outing.

• Join a CSA. It’s the opposite of convenience: you eat what’s growing, when it’s ready. It teaches you seasonality and guarantees income for farmers.

• Know your farmer. Ask questions. Learn how your food is raised. Understand why it costs what it costs.

• Support farmer grants. Through efforts like the For Farmers Movement, you can contribute directly to farmers’ survival. Sometimes a small grant is the difference between closing down or continuing for another season.

These aren’t massive lifestyle overhauls. They’re small choices that add up. They’re acts of connection that replace convenience with meaning.

The Bottom Line

Convenience isn’t free. It isn’t harmless. It isn’t neutral.

Convenience is a dirty word. It distorts our sense of value, undermines seasonality, and severs us from the people who grow our food.

And for small farmers, convenience is a silent killer.

The next time you’re faced with the easy choice, the one-click, the drive-thru, the shrink-wrapped package, stop and ask yourself: Who pays for this convenience?

Because the answer is often the very farmers we need most.

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Dana DiPrima is leading a national movement to support small American Farmers because our health, communities, environment, and regional economies depend on it. The For Farmers Movement supports farmers by sharing their stories, replacing myths with facts, and providing them with grants and other helpful resources.

Dana is also the host of One Bite is Everything, the podcast that connects the food on your plate to the bigger world by sharing conversations with thought leaders, helpful tips, and monthly recaps of key issues on the food and policy scene. One Bite is Everything is a proud member of Heritage Radio Network, home to some of the most influential voices in food.

Dana authors a weekly letter in addition to this blog. You can subscribe here. You can join the For Farmers Movement to support your local farmers here. You can also follow Dana on Instagram.