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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] "Producer's Only" vs non-"Producer's Only" Markets

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  • From: Lucy Goodman <goodows AT infinet.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] "Producer's Only" vs non-"Producer's Only" Markets
  • Date: Wed, 05 May 2004 20:32:12 -0400

I have been working with a great group of people since November to open a new market in a town that had an existing saturday market that had to move from its' site. In November there was a meeting for all interested parties about where to move the market. at that meeting a steering committee of about 13 was formed. the steering committee was broken down into subcommittees to create rules, look at various sites, figure out how much to charge vendors, etc.. we met as these groups several times a week depending on how many groups one was on (I was on 3). In January we had a split. there was one faction that wanted to do the market in the parking lot of the local high school and another faction that wanted to have the market in the two parks that are located in the center of the uptown central business district of a picturesque college town (I was a part of this group). So the steering committee lost about 5 members at that point. we continued to meet as a steering committee once more and than we created a governing council of 3 vendors and two community/business members plus have an at large member who is a member of the city council and we have another defacto member who is head of the visitors bureau who was instrumental in getting the who project going and staying the course. She was our liaison with the City and if your group is going to have a market on municipal property you will have to deal with the city and it is easiest to have a person involved who knows how the city works. in our case we had two people working closely with us.


We pulled this off through a lot of work, patience, and perhaps most importantly a unified vision on the part of the committee. we were willing to work hard on the project and we had a nice balance of talent on our committee. Once we formed a governing council in march we started meeting at least once a week. because we wanted to close down two streets saturday mornings for this market we had to attend several city council meetings and present a formal proposal as the farmers' market council over the street closings. we have had to deal with merchants in the uptown district that are unhappy with change and were not sure if they wanted us there. Parking is a HUGE issue in this town and we were proposing to take up about 40 parking places for 4 hours on saturday mornings (when the town is normally a ghost town). The end of March 1/2 the council wanted to table the farmers' market until mid May. this put us all on pins and needles as it looked like our months of work up until than would all be for naught but it turned out alright and the council voted us in. After that vote things got intense. meetings were happening once or twice a week because we now had a market to put together-laying out where the vendors will park, pedestrian traffic flow, putting to gether opening day festivities, contacting new area vendors, setting up a "friend of the Market" plan so community members can financially support the market so we can one day pay a market manager instead of using an all volunteer force as we have to do for this first season


We got the Vance Corwin, Eric Gibson, Marcie Rosenwieg book The New Farmers' Market and followed it. I would suggest your group do the same.

Okay, we decided to be a producer only market because reselling brings down the market, customers feel cheated. they come to farmers' markets to get local farm fresh food. They should not have to guess who is selling the real stuff and who is reselling food.

I think the name says it all FARMERS' MARKET, a market of farmers' selling the things they produce. these are not brokers' markets or grocery stores. for Ohio that means no tomatoes in May, no oranges, no bananas, no avocados, etc. but we did have a good variety of produce, meats, prepared food, baked goods, plants, etc on our opening day last Saturday. and we had a lot of people come to the market despite rain all morning.

I have sold at markets that allow reselling and the resellers tend to bring down the price below what a farmer can charge and still make a sustainable profit. not to mention the quality of food they bring to market is pretty bad for the most part. Same stuff found in any grocery store because it bought from the same distributor.

Lucy Goodman
Boulder belt organics
New paris, OH
http://www.boulderbelt.com





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