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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] rural markets

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  • From: road's end farm <organic101 AT linkny.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] rural markets
  • Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:31:38 -0400


I don't know what makes one market take off when another one doesn't. And both enthusiasm on the part of local municipalities, and assistance from other sources, seems to vary wildly. But I'm having trouble keeping my mouth shut, so to speak, online today, so will send a few pieces of advice, which may or may not actually be any help to you:

1) Get together with your potential vendors and work out bylaws and market rules clearly, in advance: such things as, who can sell at the market; what can be sold; if everything is to be local, define what you mean by "local"; setup and takedown times; cleaning up your space; meeting any legal/health requirements (e.g. for canned goods or whatever); who makes which decisions, and what the procedure is for making decisions; and a clear procedure for amending the rules, dealing with a change in market manager and/or other officers, and dealing with grievances. Put it in writing.

It's much better to discover beforehand that one vendor assumes it's fine to sell old supermarket bananas, another objects to the condition of the old bananas but not to bringing in out of state produce, a third intends to set up a flea market booth of miscellaneous used stuff, and four other people assumed all those things would be forbidden: than to find yourselves having that argument in the middle of the first day's setup.

2) Don't give up too easily. It takes a while to get a good customer base up. If too many vendors drop out after a week or two, or even a month or two, of slow sales, the market may die off from discouragement, even if things were actually about to start improving.

3) Try to discourage people from underpricing, and from bringing poor quality.

There's a lot of useful info from a magazine called Growing for Market. They used to have a free download of a selection of articles meant for beginning market growers -- let me see if it's still there -- yes it is. Below is the link for their website; scroll down to the free download "GFM special issue about selling at farmers' markets" link. (No I don't work for them -- just a subscriber who's found a lot of useful info there.)

http://www.growingformarket.com/


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale



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