Truly Local

How to Cheat City Slickers Eager for Local Food

Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas and Claire Newell, the London Sunday Times reporters who uncovered a scam in their city’s farmers markets, offered an amusing “farm bluffer’s guide” for peddlers selling wholesale produce at the markets as if they had grown it themselves.  Here are some of their suggestions:

“Roll your vegetables around in the mud to give them an authentic farmers’ market look and you mark up your prices accordingly.

“Tear off any labels saying Spanish or Grown in Argentina or ‘gassed and stored for the best part of a year by Tesco’. Replace sticker giving the name of a quaint sounding farm or Locally Grown.

“Have a rant about modern pesticides. Make it clear to customers that you only use the countryside’s natural fertilisers. You will win their undying loyalty.

“If someone starts asking too many questions, chew some straw.”

Local-Only Brouhaha in Pennsylvania

The borough council in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, unanimously passed an ordinance in April aimed at making at least one of the two farmers markets in town live up to its name. The Saturday market would be a venue where farmers would sell directly to consumers only produce they had actually grown, the council declared.

The town’s Wednesday market would continue operating, as both markets had for years, as a “farmers market” in name only. There, vendors peddling wholesale produce would be free to continue swindling those shoppers who are drawn to the venue under the impression that they’re buying fresh-picked produce direct from local farms.

Some peddlers in Bellefonte are outraged at the infringement on their rights, and a sympathetic local politician has vowed to undo the rule. In the meantime, a reporter from the Centre Daily Times, in State College, Penn., discovered on a visit to the Saturday market that some peddlers have been brazenly defying the law.

“Gary Horner, of Spring Mills, has been selling vegetables and fruits at the market since 1972, and he says the changes have touched off an atmosphere of jealousy among the vendors. ‘It's not like it was,’ he says of the convivial market he remembers.

“Horner [claims that he] grows some of the produce -- cabbage, cucumbers, zucchini and onions -- but the peaches, melons and beets that often fill his tables he gets from other sources, and so, technically, he shouldn't be offering them on Saturdays. But he still does, pointing out there's no way for the borough to police the farms. Plus, he says, his customers look for certain things both in and out of season. ‘If they're good tomatoes, customers don't care,’ he said. ‘They want what they want’.”

As if on cue, a customer chimed in to insist that Horner's produce is the best at the market. But other shoppers told the reporter that they patronized the market because they wanted to know where their food came from and because they wanted to support local farmers.

A clueless councilman, Joe Beigle, is dead set on eliminating the ‘producer-only’ restriction at the market. He complained that keeping peddlers out of the markets drives prices up and sends vendors to other markets.

Actually, allowing cut-rate, out-of-season wholesale produce into “farmers markets” drives the real farmers out and the quality down. And it leaves well-intentioned shoppers who get wind of the scam feeling like they’ve just been robbed.

Farmers Market Scam Uncovered in London

I just came across this from April: an investigation by the Sunday Times of London into an audacious scam perpetrated against a burgeoning crowd of shoppers in England who are flocking to farmers markets in search of locally grown and produced food. The first of the modern day crop of farmers markets in Britain opened in Bath in the summer of 1997. There are now 550 nationwide, ringing up in excess of an estimated £220 million [$440 million U.S.] a year, the Times reported. They are “widely hyped as a mechanism for bringing back quality, integrity and accountability into Britain’s food chain.” But the “we grow it, we sell it” sales pitch is a lie, in the case of some of the vendors, the paper found:

“Consider, for example, Isle of Wight Tomatoes, one of the most established stallholders at London’s numerous farmers’ markets. It looks like a small, traditional enterprise and claims to sell its own homegrown produce. Think again. Its tomatoes, aubergines and cucumbers are bought from a separate company, Wight Salads, the bulk of whose £60 million turnover comes from supplying supermarket chains. Worse, as far as many green consumers may be concerned, many of the tomatoes are actually experimental genetic crossbreeds that Wight Salads is engineering to try to find the ‘next best thing’ for the supermarkets.”

To add injury to the insult inflicted on well meaning farmers market shoppers, the Isle of Wight Tomatoes folks charge at least twice as much as supermarkets for the supermarket tomatoes that they palm off on their customers. Confronted by the Times reporter, an official with the company had the audacity to dismiss concerns by insisting that the vendors at the markets had paid a visit to a farm.

The Times found other offenders:

“Isle of Wight Tomatoes is not the only stallholder jeopardising the reputation and integrity of farmers’ markets. The markets are only supposed to stock 'local produce', but last week we discovered spinach from Portugal and Spain — produced by another supermarket supplier — being sold at a farmers’ market in Kent.

“We also found evidence that even legitimate stallholders are ‘topping up’ their locally grown produce with vegetables bought from Britain’s wholesale markets. One undercover reporter was told that city folk would not know the difference, especially if the produce came with ‘a bit of dirt on’.”

Regulation of farmers markets in the United Kingdom is “piecemeal and confused,” the Times said. The National Farmers’ Retail & Markets Association has tried to bring integrity to the 170 farmers’ markets that it certifies, using an independent inspection body to check its markets.

Rooting Imposters Out of Farmers Markets Down Under

Business is booming at the 30 or so farmers markets in the state of Victoria, in Australia, according to The Age, the daily paper in Melbourne. An increasing number of Australians want to know where their food comes from, and want to support local growers, and consumers believe they can fulfill both those goals by patronizing farmers markets. Those consumers, unfortunately, are all too often cheated by imposters, Age columnist Olivia Hill-Douglas regrets to report. Well-meaning shoppers who learn they've been scammed often react by never coming back:

"People's trust in the authenticity of farmers' markets can be easily destroyed. Just ask Sophie O'Neil, a long-time farmers' market manager and advocate. In Brisbane, she and a friend shopped for that night's dinner at a local farmers' market. When they got home, O'Neil found the garlic her friend had bought was far from local. 'It was netted with "Product of China" on it,' she says. '(My friend) said to me: "But it's a farmers' market." ' And so she was really disheartened and consequently she's never been back to one."

Two farmers quoted in the story -- a blueberry grower named Mal Deveson and George Nicolas, an olive oil maker -- said self-regulation has worked fairly well to keep imposters out of markets:

"When the concept of farmers' markets first blossomed in Victoria, Deveson says that there were sometimes cases of on-selling that went on in some less-well-run markets, but 'you soon know whether or not someone's going to Footscray and buying a load of vegies and trying to sell them. Very quickly we realised we needed to be at markets where the management criteria were strong; where the ethics were strong,' he continues. 'And I enjoy knowing that they are genuine farmers.'...

"In recent years unscrupulous sellers hoping to hitch a ride on the farmers' market bandwagon have been few. 'Stallholders intimately know the other stallholders. So if someone tries to come in with a product line that's a bit dodgy it gets nipped in the bud straight away. That hasn't happened for a while,' Nicolas says."

However, Deveson, Nicolas and other farmers market advocates believe it's time to set up an accreditation program. The government has taken steps to do just that:

"As the markets grow in size and number, it's important, O'Neil says, that there be a practical system of accreditation to maintain the public's level of trust. In November, the State Government pledged $2 million to help the Victoria Farmers' Market Association introduce accreditation and sales standards, and the association is looking at overseas models to determine what will suit Victoria's needs.... It's still some way off, but market managers and stallholders are already doing a good job of ensuring that what you buy will be seasonal, local, and definitely won't carry a Product of China label."

They Call This a Farmers Market?

According to the Fargo Forum, you can get Snickers-flavored candies, T-shirts and flip-flops, beeswax candles and assorted knitted items at a new “farmers market” in Minot, North Dakota. Oh, and there's also someone selling bags of corn. This “farmers market” was the brainchild of a vendor of machine-embrodiered dishtowels who set up a group to run the market called Farmers' Market and Beyond.

Beyond, indeed. The market operates under loose rules that give the market management leeway to permit the sale of anything, whether produced in the area or not:

“The Farmers’ Market and Beyond project is open to area produce growers, home crafters and agriculture products. Other interested parties are welcome to apply for participation and will be accepted if they are a good fit for the philosophy and mission of the Farmers’ Market.”

There's nothing in the rules about exactly what that "philosophy and mission" is.

Not Enough Market Farmers in Massachusetts

In many parts of North America, there aren’t enough real farmers to fill all the farmers markets that every country hamlet and urban downtown is scrambling to set up these days. As noted the other day, it's a problem that's percolating in Minnesota right now. The Boston Globe recently reported on how the market-farmer shortage is playing out in Massachusetts.

"We don't have enough farmers to go around, so some communities are going without," the story quoted Jeff Cole, executive director of the Massachusetts Federation of Farmers' Markets, as saying. Did Cole mean that some communities are going without farmers markets? Or are “farmers markets” in some communities making do without farmers?

Undoubtedly, managers of some markets, desperate to bring some trendy farmers market vibe to their town, are tempted to fill the gaps with resellers of wholesale produce. Is that happening in Massachusetts? I asked Jeff Cole to expound on the snippet of his comment that was carried in the story in the Globe. In a response by email, Cole said he meant some communities are not able to start markets they want for lack of farmers willing and able to participate. But it is also true that an increasing volume of resold produce is filling the void, Cole acknowledged:

“As far as we know, farmers markets [in Massachusetts] are not operating with ‘pure resellers’ -- folks who are not farmers or bakers, etc. but who simply buy wholesale and sell retail. But over the years there have been a very few attempts by what we call ‘jobbers’ to infiltrate the system.  (We do not consider Haymarket in Boston a farmers market. It is purely wholesale to retail with no growers involved.)

“However, there are a number of markets that permit farmers and backyard growers to purchase product from other farmers and sell it at the market. Over the past few years, in response to the pressure, there has been an increase in the percentage of markets that allow this, but we never thought to track this information statistically."

Cole proceeded to outline the Massachusetts Federation of Farmers' Markets' position on reselling:

“Our stance is that each market must make the choice for itself in concert with the participating farmers and the community. We are, however, firm in the belief that transparency to the consumer is the most important factor in this process. Since the standard assumption of a farmers market is that the grower is selling their own product, we encourage large and clear signage for each farm in a farmers market that is selling another farm's product. In FMFM-managed markets (only seven) we in fact require it when the farmers choose to operate in what we term a ‘cooperative sales’ venue. We feel that as long as the consumer is clear about where their food is coming from, and the community supports the market, one system is not ‘better’ than the other.

“Overall, what we promote and believe is proper is ensuring that, through clarity about source of product, the consumer is the decision maker of final resort. In that regard we are supporters of the country of origin labeling requirements (as are most U.S. family farmers) passed by Congress some time ago and for which implementation is being thwarted (or perhaps more accurately Congress is allowing it to be thwarted) by special interest groups, corporate food giants, retail associations, and lobbyists.”

Small Farmers’ Fragile Toehold at Michigan Market

Lots of the fruits and vegetables sold at farmers markets and roadside farmstands throughout the upper Midwest were purchased by the vendors at the Benton Harbor Fruit Market, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, according to the New York Times. The story observed:

“That might come as a surprise to food shoppers who deliberately trek to places like Perrysburg, Ohio; Fennville, Mich.; or LaPorte, Ind., expecting that they are buying directly from the farmer. But many of those vendors no longer have the ability or inclination to stock their stalls by themselves."

Benton Harbor is “the buckle of the fruit belt,” in the heart of a region that leads the nation in production of more than a dozen crops. The 147-year-old market is “the world's largest ‘cash-to-grower’ wholesale produce market,” with over 1,000 farm families registered to sell their produce at the 25-acre facility. Small local farmers have been a fixture at the market since it was founded in 1860, but these days, they’re odd fellows out:

“A number of farmers who sell at Benton Harbor own family farms that are just big enough to stay in business. They lack the acreage or the production power of the big corporate farms who sell to distributors with familiar supermarket names, like Dole, Driscoll or Del Monte. Although Benton Harbor has 1,000 farmers registered to sell here, only about 70 arrived on a recent summer Friday, to sell to a similar number of customers.”

The main customers for the small-scale producers are vendors who will resell the produce at farmers markets and farm stands -- after marking it up as much as 100 percent. Many of the ultimate customers won't be aware of that.

Why can’t the farmers who sell at the Benton Harbor Fruit Market take their produce to farmers markets and sell it themselves? Some do, but many say they can’t spare the time and expense to cart their produce every day to markets all over the place. They’re farmers, after all, and can't spend all their time marketing. It's better for them if intermediaries carry their produce to farmers markets. But is it better for consumers? Not if they're left ignorant of the fact that they're buying from resellers.

Many farmers markets quite reasonably allow limited reselling. If the reselling is limited and tightly regulated, and the reseller bought it directly from local farmers, and it is clearly identified as resold produce, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. But consumers definitely want to and deserve to know, as a reseller interviewed by the Times reporter at the Benton market acknowledged:

"Rose Moser, of Perrysburg, Ohio, said the shoppers at her farm market outside Toledo had come to expect her to carry top-quality fruit, grown close by. 'More and more, they want to know where it came from,' said Ms. Moser, who was making the three-hour trip home with blueberries and peaches."

Flea Market Vibe Comes Back to Bite Farmers Market

A massive farmers market in Temecula, California, has swelled in size since it was launched in 1991 with 13 vendors. Today, 70 merchants offer their wares to an estimated 4,000 people on Saturdays, and 300 vendors are waiting for a booth, according to an article in the Riverside Press-Enterprise. What do all of those vendors sell? Just about anything except antiques, whether it comes off a farm or not. That has raised hackles with some local business owners, who complain that itinerant vendors unfairly compete with them and drive away their customers on what used to be a busy sales day. Some local merchants are planning on taking their grievance to the City Council.

"It's gone from a farmers market to a flea market," said Jack Keaton, co-owner of Jack's Nuts on Fifth Street, one of the business owners who is mobilizing opposition to the market.

In a statement prepared for the City Council, the group of peeved merchants stated:

"If this favoring of outsiders over city-owned and operated businesses continues, as the city appears intent on doing, it will be a ghost town surrounding the Farmers' Market on Saturdays."

Market manager Gale Cunningham told the Press-Enterprise that to allay merchants' concerns, she "tries" to limit products to handmade items and farm-related goods. And the market's web site promises that the produce at the market is grown by those who are selling it, as required by the state laws governing farmers market. But the market managment seems to pass the buck to the state regarding responsibility to assure that the law is actually enforced:

" 'Certified' means by the state of California. It's supposed to ensure that the produce are [sic] grown locally, sold by the grower and they meet all state quality standards."

'Run the Non-Farmers Out' of Market

An angry and disillusioned shopper in Tomah, Wisconsin, wrote a letter to the editor of the Tomah Journal expressing her disgust with the news that some vendors at the local "farmers market" were selling wholesale produce while making it look like they grew everything themselves. She had suspected something wasn't quite right after sampling some of the imposters' produce. Since the City Council, rebuffing pleas from 20 real farmers, declined to address the issue, the letter writer urged citizens to take matters into their own hands:

"I love my local farmers market, but I don’t like the pretenders coming and running the good farmers out because they buy their produce from an auction. If we band together as a community, maybe we can run the non-farmers out and let the real farmers be the winners. Their produce speaks for them in taste and quality."

Fox Sponsoring Henhouse?

The Whole Foods corporation is no different than any other food retailing juggernaut, as far as many small farmers are concerned. It needs such high volumes of a uniform product that the company's stores are out of their reach as place to sell their crops.

Belying the company's image as no friend of small local farmers, a Whole Foods grocery store in Fair Oaks, a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C., is making its parking lot available for a farmers market every Sunday. The store, which doesn't charge the vendors anything, couldn't be happier with the arrangement, according to the Connection Newspapers, quoting Dale Stirzel, Whole Foods' assistant store team leader.

"The response has been overwhelmingly positive. People are eating produce the way it should taste — fresh, in season and at the peak of ripeness. The vendors aren't affiliated with Whole Foods and don't have to pay for their spaces or share their profits with us. But their products have to be either grown or produced on their farms. Whole Foods supports local products and likes being a place where the community meets. And even if they don't buy produce from us on Sundays, we're there for all their other needs."