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.”
It is always best to root out all of the details before posting such an expose'. The grumblings over management of the Overland Park Farmers Market have been going on for years - it truly begs the question, "What is 'community', and how do we determine who is qualified and properly tasked to make decisions which affect it?" I still don't know if I've heard the whole truth from all sides, but it does seem (to me, anyway) that some sort of local referendum is over-due. Let's air this out, and fully, in a significant public venue.
Posted by: Kcfoodcircle | May 12, 2010 at 08:48 AM