Wellington Farmer's Market: Community and Healthy Eating

On our first morning in New Zealand had the opportunity to walk down to the farmer’s market by the harbor in Wellington. This farmer’s market exemplified the healthy lifestyles and strong sense of community of New Zealanders.

As Fons Trompenaars discusses in his chapter of Riding the Waves of Culture entitled The Meaning of Culture, food is part of the outermost, or most explicit, layer of culture (Trompenaars 21). At the farmer’s market, we saw a vivid array of fresh fruits and vegetables. We saw plums, strawberries, apricots, kiwi and even produce that we were unfamiliar with. We bought fruits and vegetables not only so we could cook, but also find ways to experience more aspects of New Zealand culture. We were particularly excited about the kumara, since it was mentioned in many of the readings we had done. Just as Trompenaars says, these healthy foods, “the observable products,” caught our attention first (21).

Looking around the market, however, I started thinking about this food as a source of community. The farmer’s market is a place where families and friends come to shop together, to stop at a food truck and eat an array of cultural food (Mexican empanadas, French crepes, Asian dishes. . .). Overall, this strong sense of community has struck me as a significant part of New Zealand culture. The food truck vendors were friendlier and more talkative than many service people I’ve encountered elsewhere, and were extremely welcoming to us as outsiders.

The community and fresh fruits and vegetables, from local farms, expressed the middle layer of culture: values and norms (22). New Zealanders, or at least those at the farmer’s market, seem to value a strong sense of community and local, healthy products. Eating healthily and participating in the community are norms in New Zealand.

The core of culture is “assumptions about existence” (23). As Trompenaars suggests finding cultural assumptions by posing questions, I would be able to ask, “Why do you lead a healthy lifestyle?” Or, “Why do you spend time in your community?” These are the basic assumptions of life that the farmer’s market represents of New Zealand culture. While these ideas can be rather universal on a global scale, since I have run into them in the United States, a healthier lifestyle seems to be more pervasive here than it is in the United States. For example, I’ve noticed that people are fitter here than in the United States. As far as the community, Wellington contains many “community-building” structures such as jungle gyms for children.

Additionally, at the farmer’s market we saw the strong sense of community in how people interacted with one another, and how New Zealanders interacted with us as visitors to their country. One of the most defining moments of this excursion was when a man, presumably the farmer who grew the crops, heard us talking and said to us, “Where did that sound come from? America?” We spoke to him for a minute, explained that we were students from the Washington D.C. area and that were visiting on a study abroad trip for a few weeks. Then we moved further down the rows of fruit. A minute later, as we were waiting for someone to finish paying, he approached us and offered us a bunch of bananas–a piece of the culture. More specifically, it was a piece of this healthy lifestyle of New Zealanders.

I have been thinking a lot about New Zealand, and specifically Wellington, as a destination. At the farmer’s market I heard many different languages and accents, and I realized that this intersection of cultures must be a natural part of New Zealand (and Wellington) culture itself. New Zealand is a bucket-list destination for most people I know, and is a destination for people from all over the world. The man who gave us the bananas was welcoming us visitors into his country and community; he was giving us a good impression of New Zealand culture.

Overall, I noticed that the farmer’s market exemplified a sense of strong community and the healthy lifestyle of New Zealanders. People from all different backgrounds gathered at this farmer’s market even on a rainy morning. This culture, for me at least, was very easy to fall into because of the strong sense of community and welcoming attitudes of the New Zealanders with whom we interacted.

Trompenaars, Alfons, and Charles Hampden-Turner. "The Meaning of Culture." Riding the Waves of Culture. London: Nicholas Brealey, 1997. Print.