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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] farmers’ market Bringing Food to the People
  • Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 21:39:40 -0600


"The USDA estimates that between 30,000 and 50,000 farmers sell at farmers’
markets. They are one of the most important factors in the tidal wave of
interest in local food and the mini-revival of small farms."

edible nation by mark winne
farmers’ market Bringing Food to the People
http://www.ediblemissoula.com/content/articles/spring08/edibleNation.pdf

“What’s your favorite vegetable?” asked the Hartford Courant reporter. “Pork
chops,” replied the farmer. That’s how the opening exchange went between the
press and a Hartford area farmer on the first day of the first farmers’
market in Connecticut since World War II. That the market’s organizer, Sally
Taylor, had not rehearsed these pioneer farmers for their public debut was
not her fault. The simple fact that nearly 20 Connecticut River Valley
growers had circled their hodgepodge assortment of trucks and vans around the
city’s Old State House was a miracle. It had required months of detailed
planning and delicate negotiations with skeptical city officials. Hardest of
all had been the careful and extensive outreach to the region’s farmers,
whose initial response to the idea of an urban farmers’ market ranged from a
monosyllabic grunt to stone silence. The chaotic street scene that unfolded
on that July day in 1978 belied the deliberate behind-the-scenes
orchestration that had been necessary to bring this dream to fruition.
Hartford residents and downtown office workers had been forewarned with
leaflets and press releases, but no one had quite imagined the disheveled
band of country folk who would appear on their doorstep to hawk their wares.
The farmers were backing their trucks up to the curbs in their preassigned
spots, just as planned. Signs and banners had been dutifully placed to secure
maximum exposure but avoid offending the city’s insurance executives. The
city’s police officers, with their squad cars’ cherry tops spinning, were
there to direct traffic and protect the public safety, just in case the
pent-up passion for fresh vegetables erupted into violence.

The presence of the local constabulary heightened the drama. Is someone
famous coming to town? Is there an office tower fire? Where’s the bank
robbery? These were just some of the questions coming from would-be customers
starting to close in on the scene. With a sense of heightened expectation,
the number of people began to swell, seduced perhaps by the heavy scent of
fresh peaches, just-picked corn, and brilliantly colored flowers. People who
had rarely seen, smelled, or tasted local produce found themselves caught up
in the gawking crowd. They would soon engulf the hapless farmers, who took to
defending their rickety card tables like soldiers on an embattled perimeter.
As a group that generally avoided Hartford at all costs, the farmers found
their pockets swelling with cash in direct proportion to their dwindling
supply of produce.

Farmers’ markets started popping up across America in the mid-1970s. Los
Angeles, Santa Fe, and New York City were among the early entries as
consumers began to rediscover the taste and price value of locally produced
food. For Hartford, farmers’ markets were a part of the original Hartford
Food System game plan, a non-profit organization that was one of the first in
the nation to take up the challenge of creating a seed to table approach to
the region’s food, nutrition, and agriculture problems. The organization’s
hope for farmers’ markets was that they would connect local farmers and urban
consumers, especially lower-income families, for both groups’ mutual benefit.

Farmers’ Markets Experience a Growth Spurt

Fast-forward 30 years, and the number of farmers’ markets nationwide has
swollen to almost 4,500. The USDA estimates that between 30,000 and 50,000
farmers sell at farmers’ markets. They are one of the most important factors
in the tidal wave of interest in local food and the mini-revival of small
farms. The Greenmarkets of New York City, made famous by John McPhee’s 1970s
New Yorker story “Giving Good Weight,” had the biggest impact on the early
explosion of farmers’ markets. The Greenmarkets served as an inspiration and
model for market aficionados everywhere, including those in Hartford. The
name itself became synonymous with freshness, local farming, and vibrant
outdoor markets.

Despite the Greenmarkets’ eventual success, the challenges that early
organizers faced were enormous. They included finding acceptable sites,
securing permission to use the sites (then retaining that permission for more
than one year), recruiting farmers (some coming from as far away as 200
miles), getting parking permits, towing cars, and dealing with the Gordian
knot of New York City’s bureaucracy. By 1981, however, New York City had 16
farmers’ markets and had spawned several others outside the city.

The essential determinant of success for any market was usually what worked
best for the farmers—where they would make the most money and encounter the
fewest hassles. In some cases, market sites were selected to meet the needs
of a particular community and to serve mixed-income shoppers, but
increasingly farmers followed the gravitational pull exerted by higher-income
shoppers. As the saying went: no money, no farmers; no farmers, no market.

How do you make farmers’ markets work for low-income shoppers— offering them
affordable fresh produce at convenient locations—? Where the focus had been
exclusively on securing the best return for farmers, markets rarely provided
a good food-shopping opportunity for low-income people, because the food was
priced too high and the location was not accessible. When markets had been
located exclusively to fit the needs of low-income communities, they rarely
attracted sufficient farmers to be successful.

New Orleans Farmers’ Markets Show the Way

The struggle for farmers’ markets to help close the food gap would be played
out almost every time a new market opened. Even when markets were so
successful that it seemed there was no room for improvement, a small voice in
the back of the room would ask why there weren’t more people of color
shopping there, or why residents from the nearby low-income neighborhood
weren’t coming to the market. The answer came as market organizers learned
the art of collaboration. In that vein, farmers’ market leaders such as
Richard McCarthy of New Orleans could sustain the value of a farmers’ market
without straining its capacity to deliver a wide range of benefits to a
diverse number of people.

McCarthy, age 42, utters perfectly constructed sentences that are woven into
equally fluent paragraphs and are spiced discreetly with the vocabulary of
New Left politics. He has a well-formed theory of change that surgically
dissects the failures of globalism and free market capitalism. He’s scraped
his knees on the rough ground of Old South politics, racism, and a city that
is struggling to revive after the hellfire of Hurricane Katrina. Though
McCarthy can hold forth with ease on the tenets of Marxism, he prefers the
simple pleasures of helping to restore people’s pride in their place,
heritage, and food.

In 1995, McCarthy led the way in the establishment of the Crescent City
Farmers’ Market, which would become home to 60 Louisiana farmers grossing $2
million a year. Once he figured out how to organize the market correctly, he
passed the wisdom on to other groups, which then started 12 additional
markets in the region. City consumers, chefs, and a generous slice of the Big
Easy’s bon vivant class, began to see their fates intertwined with that of
the farmers, who in turn, like farmers in Connecticut, were struggling to
survive the changes in the food marketing and distribution systems.

McCarthy saw that New Orleans’s survival depended in large part on the
vitality of its food culture, so he organized the market as a creative
economic engine that would channel the city’s unique heritage in music, food,
and conviviality. But along the way, he kept his feet on the ground so as not
to leave the city’s large low-income population behind. Job creation at all
levels of the food chain and some food processing businesses, such as a
neighborhood-based pasta company, were all part of the mix.

He built trust among farmers who had previously resisted coming to New
Orleans without a gun because of the city’s reputation as the murder capital
of America. He shored up the confidence of a welfare mother who didn’t
believe she had what it takes to start and run her own business. And, most
important for low-income consumers, he was able to secure $100,000 annually
in Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) funds that provided a powerful
incentive to thousands of lowincome households to shop at the farmers’ market.

A Maturing Presence and a Growing Commitment

Steady growth in the number of farmers’ markets continues. Although their
outsized presence is due more to their visibility than to their share of the
U.S. food market—farmers’ market annual sales represent less than 1 percent
of retail food dollars—their impact on today’s food consciousness is
undeniable. According to the Project for Public Spaces, almost two-thirds of
all farmers’ markets are located in downtown areas. More than one-third are
sponsored by local government, which is a testament to their elevated
standing as local economic and tourist attraction engines. While their
commitment to serving all income groups is not universal, almost two-thirds
of the markets participate in the FMNP, which provides special vouchers to
low-income families to purchase fresh produce at farmers’ markets. And
increasingly they are deploying technology that enables them to also accept
food stamps. America’s food consciousness was aroused from a deep slumber in
the late 1960s. By the 1970s, hippies, health nuts, and overeducated young
people, including myself, had developed an uneasy sensation that there was
something wrong with our food system. This growing awareness incited a kind
of disorganized guerrilla warfare that sent an ever-increasing number of
insurgents into food co-ops, organic farms, and communes. While these early
skirmishes probably inflicted more damage on the guerrillas than they did on
their ill-defined enemy, they also produced a small class of skilled
organizers and leaders capable of taking the struggle to a higher level. And
in the battles to come, it was farmers’ market organizing that established
the first successful beachhead in the fight to overhaul the food system and
close the food gap. ..

Adapted from Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty
by Mark Winne Copyright © 2008 by
Mark Winne. By permission of Beacon Press, www.beacon.org.
For 25 years Mark Winne was the executive director of the Hartford Food
System in Hartford, Connecticut. He now writes, speaks, and consults
extensively on community food system topics. Winne lives in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. Read more about Mark’s work at www.markwinne.com







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