The managers of a bustling, 75-year-old “farmers market” in Jacksonville, Florida, pay lip service to supporting local farms. But the venue’s business practices help explain why there aren’t nearly as many real farmers nearby as there once were. The market has no restrictions on what can be sold, which means that any local farmers who want to sell freshly picked, local produce at the market have to compete with the cheapest fruits and vegetables that can be found anywhere on earth. No wonder many have given up.
“In the old days, when there was more of an agricultural center right around Jacksonville,” there were packing houses nearby, supplied with produce carried in on horse-drawn wagons from nearby farmers, said Jeff Edwards, chief financial officer of Beaver Street Fisheries Inc., which owns the venue, called the Jacksonville Farmers Market. But not any longer.
“We focus mainly on local and regional product,” Edwards insists, in an interview about the business with the Jacksonville Financial News & Daily Record. But he, and the market’s general manager, Greg Tison, go on to offer a litany of excuses for why they can’t adhere very faithfully to that goal.
“We don’t have the right climate to grow everything around here, so vendors have to supplement it with product from other places,” says Edwards. “Our culture and our society today have gotten to a point where we want certain products all year long. With that, we have to go abroad,” Tison adds.
How far afield do the market’s buyer’s go for product to sell, the interviewer wondered. “The geographic area would be Florida and Georgia. Some of it reaches up into the Carolinas. Depending on the season, we may have product coming in from as far north as Michigan. We have some syrup that comes in from Canada, and blueberries sometimes come in from Canada. It depends on the season, and what’s available. Another popular item right now is onions. Some of the onions are coming from Mexico and Peru,” Tison replies.
To the company’s credit, the Jacksonville Farmers Market’s web site is largely devoid of the come-ons trumpeting “freshly-harvested, locally grown” produce that deceitfully adorn the web sites of many other so-called farmers markets where actual farmers selling their own produce are few and far between. The home page clearly discloses that the market includes “imported items.”
Edwards and Tison are also correct to put some of the onus on consumers for demanding out-of-season produce shipped in from thousands of miles away. But supermarkets amply meet that demand. “Farmers markets” should be, as their name clearly implies, markets for actual farmers.
As has been seen in recent years in hundreds of communities throughout the United States and elsewhere, farmers markets that are strictly regulated to exclude resold produce can spur a renaissance on local farms. With a market where they can connect with consumers eager to support local agriculture and buy truly local produce, farmers can afford to innovate by trying out new crops suited for the local soil and climate and experiment with techniques to extend the seasons on each end. The result is a boon to local farmers and consumers alike.
Given the demise of local agriculture that Edwards laments, it sounds like Jacksonville could benefit from a farmers market like that.
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