Truly Local

Yet Another Reason for Local-Only Rule Revealed in Hawaii

The Kino'ole Farmers Market in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii, (see photos here and here) has created requirements for its vendors to make sure that they are selling only what was grown on the island. Luana Beck, president of the Hilo County Farm Bureau and a vendor at the market, recently told the Big Island Weekly that shoppers at other markets on the island can't be sure that what they are getting from a seller, who may strike a convincing pose as a real-deal farmer, was actually locally grown. Many vendors ship in their products and sell those items, which are "far from fresh," to unsuspecting buyers, the paper reported. Farmers who sell at the Hilo market say those so-called farmers markets are undercutting local agriculture, in more ways than meet the eye. As Mae Kayler, treasurer of the Hilo County Farm Bureau and owner of Moon Garden Farms in Mountain View, explained:

"I have heard that the Big Island could grow enough produce for all the islands. Unfortunately, it's not being done. Instead, we're importing everything and bringing in alien species like the fire ants, coqui frogs, varroa mites, stinging nettles, etc., that continue to make farming a costly venture that requires poisons. If we could stop importing items that can be produced here on the Big Island, we could get a better handle on the bugs and then we could let farmers do what they do best, which is farm and feed the islands."

Beck told the Big Island Weekly how the Kino'ole Farmers Market in Hilo addresses the problem:

"The whole theory of the Kino'ole Farmers Market is that all vendors are required to be members of the Hilo Farm Bureau -- that way we can promote locally grown, fresh products. Everything at this market is done locally."

No Surprise: Farmers Market Shoppers Expect Local Produce

Apologists for the practice of allowing peddlers of wholesale produce into "farmers markets" insist that shoppers at the venues want variety and don't particularly care where the food comes from. That self-serving excuse is poppycock, as a survey of farmers market shoppers in Ontario confirms.

According to a press release about the findings, "Customers feel a strong sense of community and local pride in attending farmers' markets.... The market customer is uniquely sensitive to the need to support local primary producers. (62% feel this is extremely important, 30% feel it is somewhat important.)"

The study was conducted by Farmers Markets Canada, chaired by Bob Chorney, who has been on a mission in recent years to clean up Canada's peddler-ridden farmers markets.

California Advisory Committee Seeks Nominees

California has the most well developed body of laws and regulations covering farmers markets. The Certified Farmers’ Market Advisory Committee, which is charged with keeping tabs on how the laws are working and whether more enforcement mechanisms are needed, has a number of vacancies that the secretary of the state Department of Food and Agriculture is now seeking to fill. It's an unpaid job but vitally important to the effort to keep California's thriving farmers markets honest. Any takers?

Farmers Market in Dallas Cleans Up Its Act

A farmers market in Dallas, Texas, has given the boot to vendors who sold furniture. Furniture at a farmers market? Yes, and it wasn’t even necessarily locally made. Some of it was imported from Mexico.

A majority of those who attached comments to a Dallas Morning News story about the change in policy favored the move. “Non-food items ruin farmers markets,” said one. “Thank goodness the farmer's market is finally returning to what it was supposed to be – a FARMER’S market,” said another. “The farmer's market is not a flea market,” proclaimed a commenter named HappyFarmer.

 

But a few complained. “I'm sorry to see the furniture and other specialty vendors go. Frankly, they made the Farmer's Market a much more interesting venue,” said one, apparently oblivious to the irony.

 

Another recent story in the Dallas Morning News made passing reference to a form of signage that could, if enforced, help consumers distinguish direct-marketed local produce from peddled merchandise that the vendor purchased from a middleman. “Local verified” signs at the market apparently can assure that the produce at least wasn’t imported from out of state. Whether it came from the farm of the person selling it is another matter.

Flea Market vs. Farmers Market in Des Moines

A plan to sharply increase the fee that vendors must pay to participate in the popular downtown farmers market in Des Moines, Iowa, has stirred up controversy, according to an article in the Des Moines Register.

One market patron who weighed in on the controversy in a comment posted on the newspaper’s Web site wondered if something good might come of it. The commentator who called himself StantheMan surmised:

"Maybe this will lead to a drop in the number of ‘non farmer's market’ type vendors. You know, like the wicker wall hangings, furniture, ‘stuff’ made out of ‘junk,’ -- all the things that no self-respecting farmer would ever peddle. Maybe get back to .... food? Veggies, things that actual farmers actually market. On second thought a fee increase will probably drive out the actual farmers!"

Farmers Play 2nd Fiddle at Carlisle ‘Farmers Market’

The Carlisle Central Farmers Market, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is on the verge of imploding less than two years after it began. The cause: a possibly irreconcilable conflict between farmers and non-farmers.
 
According to a report about the market’s demise by Joseph Cress in the Sentinel Reporter, the non-farmers think farmers have way too much clout. But farmers complain that the venue is mostly a farmers market in name only, which is more concerned with redeveloping downtown Carlisle than providing an outlet where local farmers can sell locally produced food.

The evidence suggests that the disgruntled farmers have more cause for complaint. To begin with, there are no farmers on the market’s board of directors. Board President David Sheridan, oddly enough, seems to think that would be a conflict of interest.

However, as Sandra Kay Miller, who owns Painted Hand Farm in Newburg, explained, input from farmers could have averted some boneheaded management decisions, starting with the plan to keep the market open on two back-to-back days each week, Friday and Saturday. “That’s fine for people who don’t have farms. But I have 150 animals I need to take care of,” said Miller, who recently withdrew from the market in frustration.

Miller said the farmers proposed having a market on Tuesday or Wednesday as well as on Saturday, to better accommodate mid-week shoppers and the agricultural production cycle. But they were ignored. Farmers also suggested scaling back the market to Saturdays during the slow winter months, Miller said. That proposal likewise was ignored.

Several non-farmer vendors at the market told Cress they couldn’t understand what the farmers are grumbling about. Ted Loy, owner of Ted’s Oven Ready Foods, for one, insisted that there has been too much emphasis on local growers at the market. In another recent article in the Sentinel Reporter, Melissa Colucci, agreed. Colucci, who resells “hand-made jewelry” at a stall in the market, blamed the board for pushing a “personal agenda” that favors organic, grass-fed meat but bars resellers. “They were warned by multiple people that they were going in the wrong direction, and they completely ignored it,” she said, apparently meaning that the board should let the market turn into a free-for-all flea market.

Sheridan insists there is room in the market for both local growers and resellers. Local growers alone couldn’t cover the rent for 7,800-square-foot indoor facility occupied by the market, he says. The association’s Web site, however, clearly seeks to hitch the venue’s wagon to the local food fad that is sweeping the nation, and offers no hint that any reselling is allowed. As the market’s “mission statement” declares, the venue will be a “destination to showcase our region’s bounty…and to provide entrepreneurial opportunities for those who produce and sell local products.”

That would suit Miller fine, if only the mission statement were truly put into effect. “The bottom line is, without the farmers, it’s not a farmers market,” she said. “That’s what it says over the door. People go there to buy food.”

Slippery Slope in Tasmania

The seven-year-old farmers market in Burnie, in the Australian state of Tasmania, has lost its scruples over the years, to the dismay of some erstwhile supporters, according to a report in The Mercury, Tasmania's largest daily newspaper.  On a recent visit at the peak of summer Down Under, Elaine Reeves found 30 vendors selling an array of items ranging from tomatoes and basil to rhubarb and venison. But it wasn’t all locally produced by those who were peddling it, Reeves noted. The market “has drifted away from the purist ideal that only people who grow, raise, brew, bake, catch, pluck or make the food can sell goods at the market,” she wrote, explaining how the market gradually lost its way.

"Firstly, people who were not farmers were given permission to sell food -- as long as they got the food directly from a farm. Then an 80:20 rule came in -- stallholders could buy in 20 per cent of what they sold in order to provide a range of produce, but what they bought had to be Tasmanian. Now the committee that runs the market allows stallholders to source everything from the wholesaler if they want to.

 

"This all-encompassing definition of ‘farmer’ is frustrating for people who do grow their own -- either as a business or to sell the surplus from home gardens. It has also been deeply disappointing for organics advocate Graeme Stevenson, who was involved in the market from the start, but has quit now. He says he's ‘worn down’ by the new policy."

Reeves discovered that stallholders who fill their tables with wholesale produce realize they are scamming consumers who are drawn to the so-called farmers market, presumably on the assumption that they are buying directly from farmers. One vendor had no qualms about lying.

"One woman assured me that her copious and varied array of fruit and vegetables was all from her own garden, including the uniformly huge iceberg lettuces packed in lettuce boxes and apricots in cartons marked ‘stonefruit’."

The Trouble With Peddling at 'Farmers Markets'

Those who defend the reselling of wholesale produce at so-called farmers markets (for example, in Virginia and Arkansas) insist that the practice is the only way to give shoppers the variety they want. They also typically vow that wholesale goods, trucked in from who-knows-where, will be offered for sale by peddlers at the market only until genuine, locally grown produce comes into season.

Trouble is, the practice is deceitful and it leaves shoppers, who are drawn to the markets because they want to support local farmers and think they’re buying fresh-picked produce, feeling cheated (as has happened from Tomah, Wis., to Melbourne, Australia). There’s an even more insidious problem with allowing wholesale produce into farmers markets. It will in the long run actually limit the variety of locally-grown offerings by discouraging real farmers from innovating.

A recent story in the New York Times about farmers markets in Connecticut illustrates what can happen when vendors are allowed to sell only what they or neighboring farmers have grown. This year, the markets in Fairfield, New London and Litchfield stayed open through the winter for the first time, with little advance notice to the farmers, so the selection of produce was limited. But that will change. Farmers who sell at the markets, confident that they won’t be competing with produce trucked in from California or Mexico and resold by peddlers at the markets, have begun looking for ways to assure that they will have more to offer in the winters to come.

Within a year or two, consumers in Connecticut will be able to buy truly local produce year round. Real farmers will benefit, as well. Ed Gazy, for instance, has big plans for next winter for the half-acre that he has under plastic at his 20-acre Gazy Brothers Farm in Oxford.

He is already thinking in terms of lettuce, tomatoes, basil, garlic, spinach, arugula, beets and radishes for next year. “It’s a start to having a year-round income for a small farmer,” Mr. Gazy said.

Laura McKinney of Riverbank Farm in Roxbury agreed. “There’s less pressure to make all your money in the short growing period that there is,” said Ms. McKinney… She is already planning for next winter — more fall crops like celery root and cabbage, and using the farm’s new commercial kitchen to process tomatoes.

David Zemelsky of Star Light Gardens in Durham, who already grows greens all winter with about half his three acres under plastic, was one of only two growers at Fairfield [this past winter] with actual fresh green produce. He said that with high fuel prices, the market was more economical than delivering to restaurants. “If I can go to one place, and do all my business in one place, it’s much more effective.”

For Paul Trubey of Beltane Farm in Lebanon, the ability to have his goat cheeses in all three winter markets allowed him to quit his “day” job as a social worker instead of going into debt, the way he usually does in winter. “It’s been a great thing that’s made the business much more viable,” he said. “It helped my spouse be less nervous about me quitting my job.”

It certainly helps if consumers are educated about the difference between a supermarket and a farmers market. As Katherine Dyer, manager of the market in Fairfield, told the reporter for the Times, “I’m hoping that customers are patient and realize that we’re growing a new market and next year we’ll have more stuff.”

Keeping It Mostly Local in Cooperstown

The 17-year-old farmers market in Cooperstown, N.Y., allows its farmers to supplement their home-grown fruits and vegetables with a limited quantity of produce that they have purchased from others, but tries to keep a tight lid on the practice. According to the rules that govern the market, which runs every Saturday from mid-May through mid-December, 80 percent of the food and crafts offered for sale by each vendor must be grown or produced by the “vendor, a member of the vendor’s immediate family, or representative” within a 50-mile radius of Cooperstown. Those items that the vendor has purchased from others must be clearly labeled as such.

For the 20% of brokered products offered by a vendor, the vendor must fill out the sign provided by the Market Manager that identifies where the items were grown or produced. Fruit from adjacent states may be sold at the market if it is not in season in New York State.

The market management seems to be serious about enforcing the rules. To that end, each vendor must sign an inspection agreement, consenting to spot checks by the manager and an independent inspector on 24-hour notice. A curiously worded provision in the agreement states that inspections “will be used indiscriminately for new vendors, and for investigating suspected violations.” What do the inspectors’ look for, and what happens if the suspicion that a vendor was cheating is confirmed?

Inspection criteria will be based on the vendor’s market application. Are they growing the crops listed on their application? Are they growing amounts that correspond to what is sold at market? Are they baking, processing, or otherwise producing items sold at the market and in corresponding quantities?

In the event that a grower/producer is found to be in violation by the inspectors or refuses to provide access to their farm/kitchen/production facilities, they will be afforded a hearing before the Market Board, at which time the grower/producer can present evidence to support a defense. After the hearing the Market Board will render a decision. Disciplinary actions include but are not limited to temporary or permanent suspension from the farmers’ market, and/or fines.

Virginia Market Capitulates to ‘Consumer Demand’

A majority of vendors at the farmers market in Warrentown, Va., have voted to approve a controversial plan that would allow them to resell wholesale produce. The market has been a “producer-only” operation in recent years, according to a March 19 report on the hotly disputed proposal in the Fauquier Times-Democrat. But the vendors who pressed for the change asserted that customers are unhappy with the lack of variety.

Sabrey Alshakarwi, who has been peddling teas and spices at the market for more than 20 year, complained that he was “getting a headache” explaining to customers why the farmers market couldn’t match what the local Giant supermarket was offering. He was in favor of giving customers what they want, and so he sided with the majority of vendors who considered the proposal at the market association’s annual meeting. On a 10-5 vote that opponents say was tainted by low turnout, the vendors decided to switch from a producer-only market to what they will call a “Virginia-grown market.”

Under the new rule, up to 20 percent of what vendors will be allowed to sell at the farmers market can consist of items purchased elsewhere and resold. Supposedly, it will be produce grown by other Virginia farmers, a restriction to be enforced by requiring resellers to show receipts. But some of the farmers who sell at the market and strongly oppose the plan are skeptical. They fear the real growers, and in turn the entire market, will be undermined by even a limited encroachment of wholesale produce. As Kelly Alm, a reporter for the Times-Democrat, noted:

Jim Mello, who has been selling at the Warrenton market for 21 years, said he wants the market to stay a producers-only market. “It’s compelling that you can stand in front of a customer and say, ‘I grew this,’ and tell them how you grew it, and what you put on it, and even encourage them to grow it themselves,” he said.

Eric Plaskin of Waterpenny Farm in Rappahannock agreed. “I grow everything I sell,” Plaskin said. “I think it's dangerous to mess with that.” Plaskin said that his economic success is based on being part of a market selling locally produced food. “This is not about reselling,” Plaskin said. “It's about going directly to the source.”

Sue Olinger, a new market board member said that the transition would allow vendors to bring in early and late crops from other parts of Virginia, making “the market more viable for the entire year.” … However, Mello also pointed out how opening the market to early crops risks “taking the top of the market,” and forcing those vendors who produce the same product to lower their price.

Others wondered how the 20 percent would be quantified and enforced. “Are we talking 20 percent of the market value, 20 percent of volume, 20 percent of the quantity in the display space?” Plaskin asked.

All of the vendors at the annual meeting agreed on one thing. If the market does abandon its producer-only policy, vendors who are selling products they did not grow should at least be required to put up signs disclosing that to customers. As Alm observed, those who don’t resell produce may well also choose to let shoppers know that. “Those who grow all of their own produce will most likely want to market as such to continue attracting customers to whom buying locally and directly from the producer is important,” Alm wrote.

Keeping it Truly Local in Budleigh Salterton

The small town of Budleigh Salterton on the coast in southwest England has a growing farmers market that insists on keeping itself truly local. Malcolm Florey, leader of the market project, explained the rules in a story in the North Devon Gazette about the upcoming season opening:

“All traders have to meet the strict criteria as produced by the project working group and agreed by the Chamber of Commerce. In particular the produce and products sold must be grown, reared, caught, or manufactured by the stallholder within the defined local area. In addition the principal producer, or someone directly involved in the production process, must attend each market and be on the stall.”

There's no shortage of local producers who can meet those “strict criteria” and are vying for spaces at the market. Florey had initially hoped to have a dozen producers lined up for the March 28 opening. He has signed up 15, and placed still others on a waiting list. Vendors at the monthly market, held on the last Friday of each month, will offer Red Devon beef, local pork, lamb, free range chicken, trout, venison, cheese, breads, cakes, pies and preserves, vegetables and plants, honey products and other items.

Big Business Comes to Santa Monica Market

An increasing percentage of the produce sold at the thriving farmers market in Santa Monica, Calif., winds up at high-end restaurants and gourmet grocery stores scattered all over the country, reports Russ Parsons in the Los Angeles Times. That’s because wholesale produce companies have become major buyers at the market, held each Wednesday and Saturday, where I have been a regular for years and years.

That is not exactly what farmers markets are supposed to be for.  They are supposed to be venues for sales directly to consumers. But farmers markets are also supposed to help generate business for local farms, and if possible, revive entire local food economies. And if the market in Santa Monica is doing just that by helping its farmers hook up with some big customers, who can complain about that?

Well, chefs can complain. Many of the leading chefs in Los Angeles have been major local supporters of the city’s farmers markets, particularly the well managed one in Santa Monica, for years. Now, they often have to watch as wholesale guys cart off cases full of the best stuff. A number of chefs expressed their concerns to Parsons for his story, “A Food Fight Over the Cream of the Crop.”

“Though no hard figures are kept, some growers say that as much as half of what they sell at the market is bought by produce companies. As a result, what had long been a kind of informal meeting place for many of Southern California's foodies and chefs is no longer quite so clubby. What chefs once regarded as a combination of culinary laboratory and kaffeeklatsch -- a place to find new ingredients and ideas and swap gossip, sometimes seemingly in equal proportions -- is more and more a place for big business.”

Santa Monica market manager Laura Avery, who has run the operation since 1982, just a year after it opened, is caught in the middle of the conflict. She is considering some innovative solutions. She told Parsons that one idea under consideration is to create a separate market for wholesalers, either at a different location or earlier in the morning at the site of the regular farmers market.

“There is certainly a wide range of opinions among farmers, among chefs and among the produce companies,” she said. “They're all trying to get more small-farm produce into restaurants, which is great. But we want to be sure to keep stuff on the tables for regular customers and smaller restaurants who come every week… Certainly, we're victims of too much good stuff, of too many happy customers. But I think we can make it work.”

Local Food and Fuel Efficiency

Anthony Flaccavento, who farms in the foothills of the Virginia Appalachians and sells his harvest at a farmers market in nearby Abingdon, is fed up with the naysayers who are popping up all over the place these days asserting that locally grown food isn’t so fuel-efficient after all. As noted here at Truly Local, the New York Times reported in December on a study showing that so many factors come into play in assessing any particular food item’s carbon footprint that it’s impossible to make generalizations. Newsweek recently added another dig:

It's the golden rule of the local-food movement: the fewer miles that food travels, the better for the environment. The only problem is, it may not be true.

Flaccavento weighed in with his answer to the skeptics in a commentary published in the Washington Post. Those who have “disparaged local food economies” are just plain wrong, he asserts, laying out some simple math to prove his point.

“A full tractor-trailer hauls about 32,000 pounds of produce. On average, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, this food travels about 1,750 miles from farm to market, in trucks that get about 5.5 miles per gallon. That's 320 gallons of fuel to transport 32,000 pounds, or about a gallon of fuel for every 100 pounds of food.

“My farm is an eight-mile round trip from the Abingdon farmers market. Our '94 Toyota pickup gets 15 miles to the gallon, fully loaded, so my trip to and from the market uses just over a half gallon of gas. We take and sell an average of 1,600 pounds of fresh produce every Saturday morning. This works out to 3,200 pounds of food for every gallon of fuel expended. That's 32 times more efficient.”

Of course, some farmers drive farther to markets and sell less, and some consumers drive farther to farmers markets and buy less than they would at a supermarket. Flaccavento acknowledged those variables and conceded that when they get tossed into the mix, the math is no longer so simple. He is not a hardcore locavore. But he remains firm in his conviction about the environmental superiority of locally-based food economies.

“When my wife and I get up at 5 on Saturday morning to start packing our truck, a cup of strong coffee and a glass of orange juice make it a little easier. So we're not dogmatic about local foods. But we also know, first hand, that locally produced foods are increasingly abundant, convenient and rewarding. The critics notwithstanding, buying local food is a sensible way to eat well, save fuel and reduce your carbon footprint.”

Arkansas Market Still Dominated by Peddled Produce

The Little Rock River Market is evidently quite a tourist draw, but it has long been dogged by complaints that it isn't a true farmers market. In fact, truly local farmers say they have been driven out by peddlers of cheap imported food. Complaints of this sort were documented two years ago. They surfaced again in a recent report on a local television station. Two-thirds of the produce sold in the so-called farmers market is brought in from out of state, said farmer Jody Hardin, who was blowing the whistle then and now.

There's nothing wrong with that, a city official seems to think. Bryan Day, Little Rock's assistant city manager, told the television news channel that bringing in produce from outside of Arkansas is a necessity.

"Because we're in Arkansas, to have a full market, that would be very hard to do, so we do have to allow produce to come in from other states and sometimes from other countries."

Hardin has had enough of that kind of thinking. He said he plans to open a purely local food stand with several other local farmers nearby.

Carbon-Footprint Hype Debunked

Here's a recent piece from the New York Times reporting on a study that punctures some of the overblown claims often bandied about these days about how eating locally grown food reduces greenhouse gas emissions. That may be true in some cases, but not always, according to researchers at the University of California in Davis. Too many other factors affect how energy efficient any particular consumer's food shopping practices are. The article concludes:

"Certainly, there are many reasons for eating local food — from supporting local farmers to a desire for fresher, potentially tastier food. The research in California, however, offers the prospect of a more nuanced debate on eating a low-carbon diet. In the meantime, [Gail] Feenstra, [a food system analyst at the university] said, the research has already led her to one conclusion: Don’t drive your sport utility vehicle to the farmers’ market, buy one food item and drive home again. Even if you are using reusable bags."