Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

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

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Willie McKemie <mf AT austinfarm.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] "Producer's Only" vs non-"Producer's Only" M arkets
  • Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 09:22:45 -0500

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 08:16:28AM -0500, Wiediger, Alison wrote:
> We (a group of farmers) have spent the last 10 months putting together a
> producer-only farmers' market in our area. There was an existing farmers'
> market that allows re-selling. The problem has been (we have been a member
> of that market for 14 years) that if you allow ANY re-selling, it is almost
> impossible to control it. The rule was that a member must grow "most" of

Congratulations on starting a peddler free market!

Perhaps your most important point was that allowing ANY peddling is
almost certain to lead to wide spread peddling and the eventual demise
of the market as an asset to local growers. I believe someone else
indicated that peddlers drove prices lower. While true, that is a
minor effect. The major effect is that peddlers reduce the volume of
sales by legitimate farmers and therefore reduce the value of the
market to legitimate farmers.

Here are some points that you didn't mention but probably already
considered:

1) You need strong by-laws or other formative document. Of course the
document alone is insufficient, you need committed members. Education
of inexperienced members on the perils of peddling is of prime
importance.
2) Your formative document should provide for orderly replacement of
absent or mis-behaving officers.
3) Your formative document should provide for farmer control of the
organization. You should be able to quickly and easily get rid of
members with peddling tendencies. Bakers, crafters, etc should not
have voting rights.
4) Allowing members to sell products of other members is but the first
step toward allowing peddling.
5) You must not depend on honesty from either members or officers; you
must be prepared to deal with dishonesty.

California seems to be the only large area of the country with
uniformly honest farmers markets. I would be interested in hearing
more: how did that come to pass? are all the California markets
REALLY honest? how is the policing done?

--
Willie, ONWARD! Through the fog!
Are YOU an html abuser? http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Linux system uptime 121 days 16 hours 39 minutes




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page