Truly Local

Vigilant Manager is Key to New Market's Success

David Karp, who provides indepth coverage of farmers markets for the Los Angeles Times, recently profiled an unsung hero, the manager of one of the most successful new markets in Los Angeles, Diana Rodgers, who goes the extra mile, literally and figuratively, to assure that vendors at her market actually grew what they are selling. In five years, the market in the Mar Vista neighborhood, has grown from 15 to 70 vendors and has become a big hit with residents of the community. A vigilant manager like Rodgers is the key to such a market's success, assuring that the produce is fresh and truly local. But it's not an easy job, as Karp explains:

“Market integrity, always a concern for Rodgers, has become a priority since media reports last fall about vendors who sold produce they'd bought from the wholesale market rather than what they'd grown themselves. She evaluates farmers who apply to sell at her market by checking that they haven't been cited for peddling by agricultural authorities, by asking which other markets they sell at, by vetting them with other managers whose opinions she respects and by visiting the farms.

“Verifying integrity can be tricky. Brief farm visits like the ones she recently did are enough to catch blatant cheaters, Rodgers says, but won't nail those who grow a plausible amount for show and then buy the rest. The new mantra for integrity-conscious managers is "do the math": check records of farmers market sales against estimates of production on the farmer's certificate, issued by county agricultural inspectors.

“But the variables, such as crops, growing areas, seasons and sales to wholesale outlets are so complex that it's difficult for even a determined manager to catch cheaters, who have grown increasingly creative in exploiting the loopholes in market rules, Rodgers said.”

What's needed, in addition to tough managers, is more funding for state inspections, according to Rodgers, who favors a proposal in California for a modest increase in the fee that vendors at certified markets must pay, which would be used for market enforcement. Real farmers, in addition to consumers, would benefit greatly, but alas, according to Karp, the proposal apparently isn't likely to make it through the state legislature.

Fee Hike Proposed for Market Enforcement

A committee of the California Department of Food and Agriculture has recommended increasing a fee on farmers market vendors to fund tougher enforcement of rules against cheating. Farmers now pay a state fee of 60 cents for each day they set up shop at a certified farmers markets in California. Under the proposal, that fee would increase to $4, which would generate at extra $1.5 million a year in revenue. The proceeds would cover the costs of three additional market investigators, training for market managers and an improved database to handle consumer complaints.

An article in the Fresno Bee about the proposal noted that the number of citations issued by state inspectors for violations of farmers market regulations increased by 60 percent last year to 1,046, up from 635 in 2009. According to the Bee, “many of those cases were minor and were resolved on the spot.” But “at least six of the 2010 cases involved growers selling products that they did not grow themselves.”

In fact, that sort of cheating by peddlers, who buy wholesale produce and pass it off at farmers markets as their own, undoubtedly occurred far more often than that. That form of fraud in farmers markets is often shamelessly brazen, as a TV news investigative reporter discovered in Los Angeles last fall.

Honest farmers and market managers realize that these con artists pose a serious threat to farmers markets, and to their own livelihoods. Many such farmers would be happy to pay $4 more per day if it would help root out the imposters.

As Vonnie Cary, a citrus grower in Exeter, told the Bee, “Unfortunately, there are people who do not value the integrity of the farmers markets. And that can hurt all of us. Our customers are used to seeing us and they trust us. We have built up a relationship and we don’t want to ruin that.”

John Silveira, director of the Pacific Coast Farmers Market Association, which operates 60 certified markets in the San Francisco Bay Area, added, “When someone chooses to break the law, it is a concern for farmers market operators, farmers and consumers. And it is a situation that needs to be looked at so we can maintain the trust of the general public.”

Then there is another contingent that seems to come out of the woodwork at every mention of a need to tighten up regulations at farmers markets – a brigade of paranoiacs convinced that such talk is yet another sign of the looming communist takeover of the United States. (See, for instance, this story from Kansas City, and this from Tomah, Wisconsin).

As a comment by “tcmps375” about the Fresno Bee story posted on the newspaper’s web site declared, “Just what we need – another bunch of fat cat proctologists and bureaucrats giving every grower an anal. Somebody has bought into Obama’s failed and doomed Marxist utopian philosophy.”

“You got that right!!!” proclaimed a farmers market vendor called “boisefarmer,” who added, “I don’t need jack booted thugs running around on my private property.” He went on to insist that government regulations “won’t stop cheating” and will merely “give customers a false sense of security.” His proposed solution to that gloomy situation: “farmers market shoppers “should make their own decisions and not rely on someone else.”

What tcmps375 and boisefarmer don’t get is that the best farmers markets are booming because they are well regulated, which assures that consumers get what they expect: food grown by those who are selling it, delivered direct to the market. Any farmer who wants to hop on the bandwagon should be willing to pay for the regulatory system that supports certified markets. Farmers who don’t want to be regulated can set up an uncertified market anywhere they want and sell anything they can fool customers into paying for.

Scam Buster Finds Easy Marks at L.A. Farmers Markets

Joel Grover, a TV news scam buster for NBC Los Angeles, who is famous for catching car-repair swindles and filthy restaurant kitchens on camera, recently unleashed his camera team on the city’s vast and cherished network of 300 farmers markets. He discovered something that would not have come as a shock to readers of this blog -- “some farmers at these markets are making false claims and flat-out lies about the produce they’re selling.”

Grover reported that his team found prevaricating vendors at more than two dozen farmers markets in the Los Angeles area. It didn’t take much digging to expose some of the brazen and shameless lies he heard.

NBCLA’s undercover cameras caught trucks connected with Frutos Farms loading up with produce at wholesale produce warehouses in downtown L.A. before heading out to farmers markets. They found Juan Uriostegui selling broccoli that he said he had harvested on his farm in Redlands -- from a field that Grover found to be bone-dry and filled with weeds. And they discovered that strawberries sold by Mary Ellen Martinez at the Torrance Farmers Market, which she claimed were pesticide-free, in fact had high levels of four different pesticides.

Here’s a written summary of Grover’s broadcast: “False Claims, Lies Caught on Tape at Farmers Markets.”

Bravo to Grover. Rooting out scam artists like those he found -- and embarrassing the so-called farmers markets that harbor them -- is one way to help bring an end to the problem.

Reporters for the Sunday Times of London conducted a similar investigation with similar results in 2007. Local news teams everywhere should get in on the fun.

Farmers Keep Con Artists Out of Grower-Only Markets

On a recent trip, I visited farmers markets in two cities – Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Toronto, Canada – where some farmers and market managers have put up a good fight in the last several years to create real farmers markets, which is to say places where actual, local farmers sell the produce that they grew on their own farms.

Truly Local has previously reported on the efforts in both Carlisle and Toronto to chase peddlers out of markets, and failing that, to create new grower-only markets operating under clear-cut rules designed to exclude peddlers of wholesale produce.

I found that grower-only markets in both cities are alive and well, and I reported on my findings for Seasonal Chef. Click on over to read my recent farmers market reports from Carlisle and Toronto.

Winter 'Farmers Market' With Trucked in Produce Explained

I took a potshot the other day at plans for a winter farmers market in Somerville, Mass., zeroing in on the fact that some of the produce will be trucked in from as far south as Florida. I noted that organizers of the market were promising that the out-of-state stuff will be clearly labeled as such. So at least gullible shoppers won’t be scammed by vendors posing as employees of the farm where the produce was grown and presumably harvested a short while earlier. But still, should a market that sells produce grown by a third party a thousand miles away be allowed to hitch a ride on the farmers market fad by calling itself such a thing?

I called Dave Jackson (pictured with his family), of Enterprise Farm, which will be supplying the Somerville winter market with produce from the southern states, to seek an explanation. Jackson offered an illuminating response, explaining how he got into the business of shipping produce from a thousand miles away, how that makes economic and environmental sense, and why it is ultimately a good thing for customers and for the viability of small farms like his in New England. The conversation also touched on other topics, including what it all means for the future of the locavore phenomenon. To read my interview with Jackson, click over to the jump page.

Too Many Farmers Markets in Seattle?

The city’s daily paper, the Post-Intelligencer, asked the question, thoughtfully discussed it, and drew some intelligent responses from readers – along with the usual smattering that such newspaper articles bring of potshots at the self righteous, tree-hugging arugula eaters who are believed by farmers market haters to frequent the uppity street fests.

 

There has been an “explosion” of farmers markets in Seattle recently, the paper reported, bringing the total to 19 in the city and 39 in Kings County. The problem, as we have seen in other states including California and Minnesota, is that new markets cannibalize from older ones, and farmers get run ragged scurrying around  marketing all week when they need to be doing some farming. Even more troubling, if there aren’t enough real farmers to serve numerous markets in a city, the temptation, as has been seen in Massachusets and elsewhere, is to fill market stalls with imposters who are reselling produce. That would defeat the purpose of starting new “farmers markets,” wouldn’t it? It would also undermine consumer confidence in the whole concept of buying presumably superior, fresh-picked, locally grown produce at the venues.

 

So, what’s to be done? First, stop thinking that the be all and end all of a farmers market is to breathe life into a moribund corner of town. Seattle's Office of Economic Development has apparently thought along this lines, and according to the PI, “sees farmers markets as necessary tools for developing vibrant commercial districts.” But the agency may be having second thoughts about that, and “has recently begun studying the issue of competition and viability.”

 

Another possible solution: give real local farmers much more say-so in how many markets a city needs, and when and where they should be held.

 

As for consumers who want to support local farms but can’t always mesh their schedules with the limited hours of a farmers market, how about some regular retail outlets that specialize in local produce? That’s what TheSherm proposed in a comment posted on the PI web site: “Perhaps what’s needed is a distribution network, and consumers who are willing to buy from distributors rather than always wanting to know, ‘Did you grow these carrots yourself?’ What’s unreasonable is to expect large growers from outside the city to set up, stock, and staff booths at dozens of ‘neighborhood’ markets simultaneously, all while providing low prices and a ‘know your farmer’ experience.”

 

Pennyws, on the other hand, could do without the whole scene: “I don't bother with the yuppie, hippie crowd at the farmers markets. There’s not much difference in price getting it there, versus Safeway and the atmosphere is a bit pretentious at times.”

 

And tomross piped in: “There are too few farms to support all the ‘trendy’ purchasers who want to brag how humane they are by going to Farmer’s Markets.”

 

Jqpublic seems to think that good people would be better off if the whole stinkin’ city slid off the continent into the Pacific Ocean, taking the farmers who catered to city dwellers with it: “The idiot farmers deserve not making money believing Seattle. Too bad,” that cynic sniffed.

 

Farmers Market at a Supermarket? Not!

A major supermarket chain in Canada wants to hop on the farmers market bandwagon, but Bob Chorney, president of Farmers’ Markets Canada, isn’t buying it.

Loblaw Cos. Ltd., which owns Atlantic Superstores, announced in August that it will be “bringing the farmers market to Canadian neighbourhood grocery stores — all in one convenient location with bushels of variety.” According to a company executive, the supermarket chain will try to “replicate the farmers market experience” by having someone on hand who can “provide insight into where the product comes from and who the grower is.”

Chorney, who knows the difference between a real farmers market and an imposter, explained in an interview with a reporter for the Canadian Press, that what the Loblaw corporation can not provide is a good deal for small farmers.

Research conducted by Farmers' Markets Canada, which represents 550 farmers markets across the country, shows that farmers receive just 10 to 21 percent of the retail price of their produce at supermarkets, “not enough for a small family farm to survive on, while at farmers markets they get to keep an average 84 percent,” Chorney said.

Locally Grown...a Thousand Miles Away

Somerville, a suburb of Boston, Mass., will have a winter farmers market this year. Great idea! Except that it won't exactly be a farmers market.

As manager Jaime Corliss explained in an article about the winter market in the Boston Globe, “the market will include not only Massachusetts produce but fruit and veggies grown by small farms all the way down the East Coast to Florida, sourced by Enterprise Farms and carefully labeled to show which is which.”

The trouble with that plan is, why would truly local farmers bother to try innovating, to extend their season and grow winter crops, if they'll be competing with produce trucked in from Florida? Truly local winter farmers markets in the frosty Northeast actually can take off, if produce from far away is kept out.

UPDATE: Dave Jackson, of Enterprise Farms, offered a thoughtful defense of the plan for a winter market.

Key to Wisconsin Market's Success

The Dane County Farmers Market, in Madison, Wisconsin, is one of the biggest in the nation – with 160 to 180 vendors every Saturday -- and is also widely regarded as one of the best.

The key to its success? It is a true farmers market, as the market’s coordinator, Larry Johnson, explained in an interview with a reporter from the Wisconsin State Journal:

“We are one of the largest producer-only markets in the country, and by that I mean that the person behind the table must produce the product and it must be in Wisconsin. We have 160 to 180 vendors every Saturday, and that’s pretty impressive. Some (farmers markets) don’t have the same size, some of them allow a re-sale. We don’t allow any re-sale here at all.”

Local Government to the Rescue?

The seething controversy we mentioned in May that has roiled the Overland Park, Kansas, farmers market -- where some vendors have been accused of illicitly peddling wholesale produce as if they had grown it themselves, while some of those who were so accused have charged the market with illegal price-fixing -- hasn't gone away. So the City Council has announced that next year, the city will take over management of the market from the Downtown Overland Park Partnership, which has been running it under contract for a number of years. The market has become one of the town's "signature amenities," city officials explained, and the partnership was "overwhelmed" by the task of managing the market and trying to figure out which vendors were farmers and which were imposters. The partnership's executive director seemed positively relieved to pass the baton.

Clueless Shoppers Rally for Right to Be Ripped Off

In the midst of a brouhaha this summer at a farmers market in Arlington, Virginia, a misguided gang of commentators on a news Web site that reported on the controversy has angrily skewered the market’s management for simply trying to enforce clear-cut rules against reselling produce.

The uproar began early in the summer when one of the largest vendors at the market, C&T Produce, allegedly piled its table high with out-of-season produce that could not possibly have come from its own farm. Other farmers complained, and the management responded by kicking C&T out of the market, which touts itself as a producer-only venue for the direct sale of fruits and vegetables grown within a radius of 125 miles of Arlington.

That’s when the floodgates opened to angry tirades in the forum section of ARLnow.com, which in its initial report indicated that the only concern was the vendor’s low prices, and didn’t mention the issue of questionable sourcing until a week later. Convinced that a farm that was simply giving its customers a good deal had gotten a bum rap, most of the commentators aimed their venom not at C&T but at the organization that manages the market, the Clarendon Alliance.

“I hate what America has become,” wrote a poster called Darwin. “It used to be when someone produced a better product at a better price they were allowed to succeed, now it’s called ‘not fair’ and they are punished.”

“I thought a farmer’s market would be the kind of place where small business people could sell a good product, at a fair price, that they determined. I had no idea it was a oligopoly where prices were set, and those who refused to toe the line were cast out,” said NorthArlington Guy.

“Competition is GOOD!,” added Peter.

Other commentators urged C&T to “sue the pants” off the market management, while others heaped scorn on the “hipster doofuses” and organic yuppies who patronized such a supposedly un-American marketplace.

At least a few commentators understood that there was actually more to the story. As Doug noted in response to those demanding that C&T be allowed back into the market, “yeah…and then anyone can sell super cheap produce from factory farms around the world at farmer’s markets under the guise of ‘local produce’ and they’ll put VA, MD, and PA farmers out of business. That will truly be a great day…and I’ll get my sawdust tasting tomatoes at a rock bottom price. Awesome!!!!”

It certainly didn’t help matters that the market's managers were bizarrely tongue-tied. When ABC 7 TV reporter Stephen Tschida arrived on the scene, camera in tow, to report that C&T was kicked out only because its produce was "too good and too cheap," he asked Susan Anderson, of the Clarendon Alliance, for a comment. She could only manage to stammer, "Oh man, it's like, I don't -- please do not, wait, can we just cut this please?"

Why couldn’t she simply say that there was a question as to whether C&T was complying with the rules governing the Arlington Farmers' Market, now in its 31st year? Those rules couldn’t be clearer on the market’s web site:

“The Arlington Farmers' Market was founded on the producer-only principle: all products sold must be raised or made by the producer. The market has flourished under this rule. The producer-only rule nurtures local farmers and insures the freshest and highest quality foods possible for our customers. NO RE-SALE OF ANY PRODUCT IS ALLOWED, EVER.”

“Producers of any kind must come from within a 125-mile radius of Arlington, VA….The radius limit helps support local farmers by providing them a direct market opportunity.”

Anderson also could have said that slipping wholesale produce into the market isn’t all-American competition, its old-fashioned lying and thievery. If such a policy means that prices for some items will sometimes be higher at farmers markets, so be it. Any consumer who wants to pay the lowest possible price for produce and doesn’t care where it comes from already has plenty of places to shop. They are called supermarkets.

As for C&T Fruits and Vegetables, by mid-summer Cooperative Extension inspectors had reportedly checked out the farm, discovered that at least by then, the vendor was harvesting on its own acreage the items that it was selling at the market. So the management let C&T back in.

Getting ‘Radical’ in Dallas

The long-beleaguered Dallas Farmers Market, a venue that in the past has been cluttered with furniture and other stuff that has nothing to do with a farm, as well as lots of supermarket-type produce, is still trying to get it right.

 

It has tried to carve out space for local farmers to sell produce that they grew themselves but it also allows, as the market’s Web site acknowledges, other vendors to “complement these local offerings, with everything from Mexican avocados to Washington apples.” As other markets that have tried to mix locally-grown, direct-marketed produce with resold wholesale fruits and vegetables under one roof (for instance, in North Carolina and Arkansas) have learned, it’s hard to make that work. The truly local producers often have a hard time competing with mass produced fruits and vegetables, quit trying, and the quality of the entire market suffers.

 

Now, Robert Bagwall, creator of West Village, an upscale “urban village,” in downtown Dallas not far from the market, has come up with a shocking idea to improve the place. Make the farmers market a venue for local farmers, not an outlet for trinkets and food items from who-knows-where.

 

According to a story in the Dallas Morning News, “One of his suggestions is a radical rethinking of the whole downtown market, focusing on regional produce from regional growers, not vegetables imported from California. Everything sold at Farmers Market should be authentically local, organic whenever possible and rescued from the hodgepodge that currently clutters stalls, Bagwell says.”

 

A commentator seconded the wild-eyed notion:  “I agree with Bagwell. Get rid of the sellers who buy off the docks and lower the rent to local farmers and producers,” wrote jtt1955.

What Went Wrong at Farmers Market? Duh!

Investors in Elkhart, Indiana, spent $4 million on a gorgeous, 51,000-square-foot pavilion, built by Amish craftsman, and called it the American Countryside Farmers Market. It opened in 2007 to great fanfare and great expectations, but closed this year. “What Went Wrong?” wondered the headline on a column about the market’s demise in the South Bend Tribune.

 

The soft economy certainly had something to do with the lack of customer traffic at the emporium, which featured an array of foodstuffs, artsy doo-dads and assorted bric-a-brac, presumably with some sort of countryish flavor. But there was another problem with the place that called itself a farmers market, noted the columnist, Heidi Prescott. Apparently, it had few if any actual farmers, notwithstanding the paeans on the venture’s Web site to the “tradition of small and medium-sized family farms” in the region, and the promise that “various vendors” at the farmers market would “provide the freshest possible connection between the producer and the consumer.”

 

Critics of the retail outlet complained that the “the offerings [were] too commercialized, and the selection of locally grown fruits and vegetables too sparse,” Prescott wrote, quoting Scott Banacka to that effect. “Never liked it from the get-go,” he said. “It needed more true farmers selling their produce.”

Have Commies Taken Over a Farmers Market in Kansas?

A major brouhaha has erupted this spring in Overland Park, Kansas, over the expulsion of nearly a dozen longtime vendors from the popular local farmers market. Managers of the market, which is run by the Overland Park Downtown Partnership, have inexplicably refused to explain why the vendors were booted. It is equally inexplicable that the Kansas City Star, which has reported on the evictions from the market and the ensuing furor, hasn’t done a little bit of digging to get to the bottom of the story.

 

Anonymous commentators have been all too happy to fill the void with rumors and innuendo on invective-laced web forums.

 

The Star has reported that vendors who were told not to bother showing up at the market this year received termination letters in January which stated simply that “transition is necessary in order to meet the expectations and interests of today’s consumer.” Robin Fish, executive director of the partnership, has declined to offer further comment about the controversy, according to the Star. Paul Lyons, a member of the City Council who sits on the partnership’s board, has gone as far as to say that he “had an opinion about” the ousted vendors, but he has refused to say what that opinion might be.

 

The disinvited vendors haven’t been mum. They have picketed the market to protest their ouster. And they have told newspaper reporters that they believe they were kicked out because they refused to succumb to pressure from market managers to raise their prices -- demands that they said were illegal.

 

Indeed, a clause in the 2009 contract required market vendors to keep prices “within a 50-cent range of the fair market price for that day.” Though the policy didn’t say how that “fair” price would be determined, it explained that price cutting “hurts the market and other vendors.”

 

The policy also could have stated, but didn’t, that cut-rate produce in farmers markets is often leftover seconds from local produce terminals that cheaters load into their pickup trucks and pass off to unsuspecting consumers later that day as if they had grown it themselves. Putting a floor on prices at farmer markets is one way to keep cheaters from underselling those who actually grew the produce themselves. It is easier if less effective than, say, farm inspections. Such a rule, however, violates state restraint of trade laws, as the Kansas state attorney general informed the Overland Park market managers when he got wind of that provision in the market vendors’ contract. The clause has been removed from this year’s contract.

 

So were the ousted vendors booted for bravely blowing the whistle on illegal price fixing? Or is there, as city officials have hinted, more to the story than that?  Local officials and newspaper reporters have left it to anonymous posters on local web forums to fill in the gaps in the story.

 

The vast majority of the dozens of commentators who have weighed in on the controversy on the Kansas City Star’s online forum have settled on the view that this is yet another example of how “scummy” government “rats” are trying to “control everything.” In short, yet another sign that communism is on the march in the United States these days.

 

BobHaze, for instance, said this was an ominous example of “GUBMINT in action.” He added, “There shouldn't need to be GUBMINT involvement in Farmer's Markets....But that's what you get when you let GUBMINT grow and stick their tentacles into everything. And it's only beginning.”

 

JocoBlonde was “outraged” that heavy handed city regulators were bullying local farmers. “CHEERS to the FARMERS WHO REFUSE to get under the BIG THUMB of CITY GOVERNMENT,” JocoBlonde exclaimed.

 

A handful of commentators, on the other hand, suggested that in fact there might be some good reasons for regulations at “farmers markets.”

 

Dooolittle, for one, explained, “I am familiar with this market and it's practices for years. Some of the farmers are real and grow the food they sell on their land. There are others who go downtown, purchase produce wholesale, rebox it and sell it in their stands. One vendor in particular will tell his customers all about his ‘family farm’, and how his children and grandchildren help out on the farm, when in fact he lives in Overland Park in a suburb and goes downtown, purchases produce each week and then sells it at the Overland Park Farmer's Market. I bet if I go down there today I see him. I will buy from farmers who grow their own food, but I guess that won't be at the farmer's market there....”

 

Johnnyb99 added, that the City Market, another so-called farmers market nearby, where “gubmint” bureaucats presumably keep their grubby hands off, there are few real farmers to be found. “The whole outside of the market has the same fruits and vegetables you can get at any grocery store. They are shipped to the market from the coast in truck just like the grocery store, and the prices are higher. I never understood why every vendor at the City Market had the exact same items at the exact same price. It's obvious now, there is really only one vendor. Just like the grocery store.”

 

UPDATE: The Overland Park City Council, on May 11, asked City Manager John Nachbar to launch an investigation of activities at the market. According to a report in the Star, “He and his staff will look at allegations of vendors acting inappropriately, the source of produce sold at the market as well as contract guidelines that instructed vendors not to lower their prices.”

Peddlers Fight for Right to Hoodwink Consumers

Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Etter has delved into the controversy over whether resellers should be allowed to peddle wholesale produce at so-called farmers markets. Her story begins with a controversy we got wind of three years ago in Tomah, Wisconsin. Farmers who have grown tired of being undersold by peddlers at the local farmers market have finally prodded the City Council to take up the issue. Apparently, the peddlers won’t go without a fight. Ronald Waege, the farmer who is spearheading the drive for a crackdown, said a reseller at the market made “verbal threats to bash my head in” if Waege “didn’t keep his nose out” of the peddler’s business.

The Journal article goes on to report that the Farmers Market Coalition, a national organization based in Martinsburg, W.Va, has assembled a task force to come up with an official definition for a “farmers market.” Stacy Miller, the group’s executive director, tells Etter, “We really need to protect the image of farmers markets as places that foster community, that support local farmers and that provide access points for healthy food in neighborhoods. Without all of those things, is it really a farmers market?”

A 2006 survey of farmers markets conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that only 63% of markets require that “vendors can sell only products they produced themselves.” But as Etter notes, “enforcement can be difficult because markets often are run by municipalities or nonprofits that lack resources for policing and rely on vendors’ honesty.”

In some markets, farmers and consumers are taking matters into their own hands, Etter reports. Luis Vazquez, a farmer who sells at the chair of the commission that oversees the Ann Arbor Farmers Market in Michigan, has lobbied Ann Arbor’s city council to take action against peddlers, and he has picketed the market with a sign saying, “No Faked Goods.” The Journal article also mentions that in Little Rock, Arkansas, as we reported three years ago, a farmer tired of competing with unscrupulous peddlers of out-of-state stuff launched a rival “source-verified” market.

In Tomah, Etter reports, the problem posed by peddlers got out of hand when a wholesale produce auction house opened nearby. Some farmers at the market, who had been selling what they grew for years, suddenly discovered that it was easier to load up their pickup trucks at the auction house than spend months in the hot sun growing it themselves. Better yet, since they could buy surplus stuff on the cheap at the auction, they could undersell the pathetic schmucks at the Tomah “farmers market” who stupidly continued to actually work as farmers.

Ronald Waege, the local farmer who is pushing for a crackdown, complained to the Journal, “We sell four cucumbers for $1 and they sell eight for $1.”

In response, Etter quotes a reseller, John Helming, who is still on the same high horse that we found him on three years ago, when he was defending the peddling of wholesale produce to unsuspecting consumers at farmers market as the free-wheeling-and-dealing American way. Waege is “like a dictator,” trying “to tell you what to grow, what to charge, where you can sell it,” Helming told Etter.

Etter reports that Tomah Mayor John Rusch has proposed a solution: Put resellers on one side of the market and on the other, the farmers that “swear on the Bible they actually grew it.”