Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[D K <dkhs22@gmail.com>]

Hi all:

I was talking to my boss the other day about starting a market garden.
He runs a variety of businesses under the name Colorama and has an
excellent space for a Farmer's Market, a deli and catering company
from which scraps could be used to start composting, and me with some
knowledge and willingness to start something like this for free.
Unfortunately, he's a bit like Mr. Krabs from Spongebob (Where's me
money, boy?). He doesn't see much benefit in building local community
or how it could help his other businesses, among other things.

At any rate, I was discussing some of the possibilities with him and
he said, "I don't want to get involved in anything like that. The USDA
now requires tomatoes to be in a certain kind of box, just go ask such
and such up at the corner about his market." I had not heard of market
gardeners or farmer's markets being required to have certain types of
packaging. My understanding is that as long as you are not creating a
prepared product and just selling the fresh produce, the regulations
are minimal.

Can anyone fill me in on any new regulations that have been created by
the USDA to continue making life difficult along these same lines for
small farmers and market gardeners? Perhaps I just haven't been
keeping up to date and missed something.

Thanks so much!

Diane in Florida