Truly Local

Arkansas Farmer's Plan for a Truly Local Market Pays Off

Jody Hardin, a fifth generation Arkansas farmer whose frustrations with a “farmers market” in Little Rock were chronicled here nearly six years ago, was back in the news recently with happier tidings from his home state.

As mentioned here in 2007, he was so fed up with a so-called farmers market where two-thirds of the produce was trucked in from out-of-state, and where the management adamantly defended the practice, that he pulled out of that market and vowed to open a real farmers market for truly local farmers selling their own produce. Hardin proceeded to do just that. The thriving Argenta farmers market, in North Little Rock, is the result of his efforts.

A USDA grant helped get it off the ground, as Hardin explained in a recent interview with a reporter from an Arkansas paper who caught up with him when he was in Washington to testify about proposals to help local farmers sell more produce to nearby schools.

“We were able to leverage the grant to build one of the most exciting new farmers markets in the state, one that has attracted thousands of customers, chefs, children, and tourists to a once blighted downtown food desert,” Hardin said.

Sales jumped from $300,000 in 2008 to $1.5 million in 2010, he said.

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.

In Little Rock, Another Shameless Defense of Peddling

This story from Grist is nearly a year old, but it's well worth noting. It contains an especially clueless defense of peddling in farmers markets. The defense dredges up one of the themes that was prominent in a Wisconsin farmer's paean to reselling: if the peddlers are making a buck, they must be on the right track.

That line of argument is especially  disturbing coming from a market manager, Shannon Light, who runs the so-called "farmers market" in Little Rock, Arkansas. Light told Grist she sees nothing wrong with vendors at the market reselling produce from California, Mexico and beyond.

"Light admits she doesn't know how many of the 200 registered vendors are actually Arkansas farmers; she doesn't 'exactly divide them that way,' she says. And she doesn't seem to care much about the distinction. She says there is room for everyone in what she describes as 'the special event I am having ... like a little circus.' Indeed, the market under her management is more akin to a yuppie street fair featuring mimes and bongo players than a down-home event.

" 'Some people don't care about buying local, they just want fresh," Light says. '[The peddlers] wouldn't be bringing watermelons in May if it wasn't selling. It's profitable and something that people want. If you are dipping strawberries and you can get big and beautiful ones from California while buying your winter squash, you should go ahead and get them for your party on Tuesday'."

When a group of farmers launched a protest against rampant peddling at the Little Rock market in the summer of 2006, Light made one constructive change. She physically separated Arkansas growers from peddlers within the huge space that houses the market. But the real farmers still chafe at the sight of peddlers selling under a "farmers market" roof, confusing consumers about what's really local and what's really in season. Jody Hardin, a well-known Arkansas farmer and a fixture at the market, is one who  is "tired of the unfair playing field."

"Is this a farmers' market or a global bazaar?" Hardin asks. "Peddlers are lying, saying they have gardens. That is irritating. They don't put any money into growing their product."