Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] FYI -- Why We Need Farmers Markets And Local Agriculture

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] FYI -- Why We Need Farmers Markets And Local Agriculture
  • Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 21:24:02 -0600

FYI -- Why We Need Farmers Markets And Local Agriculture
NEAL PEIRCE
<http://www.postwritersgroup.com/peirce.htmimage00126.jpg
Flames Sear Historic Market -- Why We Care So Much
May 6, 2007

WASHINGTON --Flames soared through the high roof of the 134-year-old
Eastern Market as firefighters struggled to control the conflagration. By
dawn on April 30, about $30 million in damage was incurred.

Immediately, public grief welled up. Throngs flocked to the site seven
blocks east of the U.S. Capitol, comforting themselves and the distraught
vendors of meats, produce, cheeses and bakery goods.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty was immediately on the scene; the embers
were still cooling as he pledged to restore the building ``to 100 percent
of its architectural and historic splendor.'' Within hours, the Capitol
Hill Community Foundation launched a fund to benefit the market and its
vendors.

Why did Washingtonians react so viscerally, so rapidly? What makes one
building matter so much?

Well, there's architecture. The lofty red brick Eastern Market, designed
by Adolf Cluss (also architect of the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries
Building), is on the National Register of Historic Places.

And history. Continuously functioning since 1873, Eastern is the sole
survivor of a network of 19th-century Washington markets. It's weathered
lean years, a thwarted freeway that would have plunged through the site,
and the suggestion of officials in 1964 that it be torn down in favor of
``a huge supermarket center with plenty of parking.''

But most of all, the market is authentic. Its vendors are a shared city
treasure -- many family teams serving customers for decades, tempting all
comers with cheese and bakery aromas, suggesting recipes, serving up homey
breakfasts, offering a vegetable or fruit buyer a few extra bananas or
apples.

Small wonder then that a kaleidoscope of Washingtonians -- food stamp
holders and congressional staffers, blacks, whites, straights, gays, young
and old -- found the market a wonderfully natural place to people-watch,
rub shoulders, and carry home fresh foods.

And this was a market that broke every rule of modern retailing -- as
Washington Post writer Philip Kennicott noted, ``no aisles, no chutes to
feed the crowd through a phalanx of cash registers,'' but rather ``a
vibrant mob crowded into a single, bustling, wonderfully disorganized
space.''

Arguably, the same hunger for community is helping to feed the rapid
nationwide growth of farmers markets -- up from 1,755 in 1994 to almost
4,000 today.

A prime supporter is the New York-based Project for Public Spaces. With
funds from the Ford and Kellogg Foundations, PPS is funding market
start-ups and expansions nationwide, especially in low-income areas. The
demand for help is dwarfing the modest funds available, reports Steve
Davies, the group's senior vice president.
Last year Congress funded a U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers Market
Promotion Program. Just $1 million was allocated, but in came 367
applications seeking $25 million. Recognizing the demand, the Bush
administration has suddenly abandoned its disinterest, deciding to budget
farmers market promotions, to fund a companion program giving low-income
seniors fresh fruit and vegetable coupons at the markets, and to expand
fresh food coupon eligibility to 6 million mothers.

Americans' interest in farmers markets and fresh foods seems to be on the
rise. Why?

Health leads. Today's alarming obesity rates make it more critical than
ever that we shift from processed foods to fruits and vegetables, ``from
Twinkies and HoHos to peaches and broccoli,'' notes Gus Schumacher, a
former undersecretary of agriculture.

Second, local foods provide a buffer against national food scares like
last summer's E.coli-tainted spinach from a single California supplier.
More recently the chemical melamine, in a protein concentrate imported
from China, contaminated pet food and threatened the human food chain when
fed to hogs and chickens at isolated locations.

But farmers markets have other pluses -- providing, for example,
opportunities for minority and immigrant farmers. They also bolster
downtowns across the country and help stem economic leakage from
communities -- ``Farmers spend all their money where they live,'' notes
Fred Broughton of the South Carolina Department of Agriculture.

The dilemma is how marginalized local foods and farmers seem to be in this
age of conglomeratized agriculture and plastic-wrapped foods traveling
thousands of miles to supermarkets. Local wholesale food markets
accustomed to buying regularly from area farmers and then selling to local
food stores, restaurants, schools and universities have disappeared
continent-wide.

``We need,'' says PPS' Davies, ``to reinvent the traditional food
distribution system'' that's atrophied since 1960. Efforts to do just
that, supporting new local food distribution centers, are under way in New
York City, the Hudson Valley, Detroit, southwest Virginia and elsewhere.
Most are foundation supported; eventually local governments will have to
see their way to providing strong incentives (maybe diverting some of the
cash they now use and often waste in the zero-sum game of luring footloose
industries).

In the meantime, we need no more tragedies like the Eastern Market blaze
to remind us how desperately important the ``ties that bind'' of farmers
markets and local agriculture truly are to us all.







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page