Market Farming

["Mike Hulbert - Anna Carter - Creation Soap" <creationsoap AT boone.net>]

What we have seen at the markets is that there are 2 types of customers, quality customers and price customers, people who only buy from the undercutters price would usually bypass the local stuff for that reason anyway, the true farmers market customers are being educated more and more every year to the difference and that is why they are there, to seek out the quality with price a secondary consideration.

 

The administrative structure of the market can take certain steps right from the beginning to protect from being taken over by the resellers, restricting their negative impact and still benefit from the added draw. In the bylaws spell out the rules and policies of the market will be decided by local producers, and include only local producers on the board.

 

One of the most successful tactics we have seen for keeping the resellers from hurting the local producers is this; Once crowds start developing, one of the first restrictions to be put in place involves setting minimum prices for local crops, any type produce that is (or sometimes can be) produced locally carries a minimum price among the vendors regardless of whether it is local or brought in, this eliminates the motive for people to bring in those items from commercial sources because they can no longer undercut. Resellers must sign a commitment to follow this rule or have their items restricted from being sold or expulsion.

 

The market can set minimum prices, it is not price fixing because it is only a minimum and some can elect to sell higher for example tomatoes @ 1.50 per lb minimum, but yet the hydroponic or heirloom growers may still charge 2.00 or 2.50 but protected from the commercial vendors who then can not go down to 1.00 but must stay at 1.50. When the consumers see commercial tomatoes and local tomatoes both at 1.50 they usually go for the local, hydroponic, or heirlooms.

 

When vendors bring in items that are not locally possible it only adds to the draw when they offer deals on those items (especially when undercutting super markets) and does not hurt the sale of local farmers but in most cases increases their volume because of adding to the daily shopper counts. Usually when those vendors have out of area products they can under cut super markets with they bought the items off the secondary national market from wholesalers who deal in turned-down loads, damaged shipments, crop glut surpluses, etc. and those items are usually one shot deals or available for highly limited time periods and most likely ready to eat (ripe border line over ripe) within a 24 to 48 hour period max from the time of purchase.

 

The ripe and ready to eat factor of the "deal" or "out of area product vendors" is one of the issues we found that brings people out to the market as it is often misconceived as "fresher" than the supermarket because it is ready to eat, the consumers not realizing that actually it may have been mishandled causing a shorter shelf life than super markets require. But this common misconception also helps build customer counts so I guess it is not really bad, just misunderstood.

 

I am by no means an expert, we have just been looking at, observing, and vending at farmers markets and participating in fresh markets on several levels for over 25 years. We have always grown herbs and made value added herb products like soaps, etc. and found the farmers markets to be a great marketing venue especially in regions that have a high transient affluent summer population.

 

This year we relocated to a small farm in Northern Michigan from North Carolina and expanded our offerings into heirloom vegetables and open pollinated traditional summer vegetables and now belong to 4 different markets on 4 different days within 45 minutes of the farm.

 

The funny or strange part is we are now dealing with 4 different sets of rules and 4 different sets of personalities regarding administrative quirks which really keep it interesting to say the least.

 

I believe the local farmers market in America will soon be a primary food source for most consumers within reach of one as the public becomes more educated and the fuel prices keep going up.