Truly Local

Pineapples Booted from Dallas Farmers Market

The Dallas Farmers Market, in Dallas, Texas, has a new manager, Amanda Vanhoozier, who is taking what an online publication called Culture Map Dallas has characterized as a “radical new approach.” The farmers market is, amazingly, “going to operate more like a real farmers market, with a spotlight on local produce five days a week.” Shoppers who, for some reason, want to go to a farmers market to buy stuff from who cares where, as in a supermarket, will have their way on the other two days of the week, Monday and Friday, which will be called Produce Stand Days. The new policy takes effect on June 1.

“With these operational changes,” Culture Map Dallas explained, “it will become more like a true, sustainable farmers market, in which visitors can expect to find local farmers and producers selling food that is grown and sourced locally.”

So far, there is no sign, at least on the Culture Map Dallas website, that this sensible effort to turn the Dallas Farmers Market into a farmers market has stirred up the sort of backlash that similar policy changes have produced in Nashville and elsewhere.

There are, as of now, just two comments about the new policy on the website, both of which seem to approve of the change. Elisaberger said, “Glad to hear it. It’s about time.” Mojjaxx wrote, I think facetiously, “What!?! No PINEAPPLE????”

Sensible Rules at Farmers Markets Bring Loonies Out of the Woodwork

First, they’ll crack down on fraud at farmers markets. The next thing you know, they’ll outlaw Christmas and bring in U.N. troops to grab your guns. That is how some Americans, who have probably spent a little too much time watching Fox News, have responded when intrepid farmers market managers around the country have issued new rules aimed at preventing fake farmers from peddling wholesale produce trucked in from afar, and selling it to shoppers as if they grew it themselves on a nearby farm.

It happened in Kansas City where a crackdown on fraud at a farmers market was greeted with invective-laced comments in a local paper about how “scummy” government “rats” were trying to “control everything.” In Alexandria, Virginia, a critic of rules intended to assure that consumers were getting the local produce they flock to farmers markets to buy declared, “I hate what America has become.” In Wisconsin, a farmer who was tired of being undersold by peddlers and wanted to ban imported produce from a local farmers market was assailed as a “dictator” trying “to tell you what to grow, what to charge, where you can sell it.” In California, supporters of a proposed fee to pay for enforcement of rules against reselling were accused of having “bought into Obama's failed and doomed Marxist utopian philosophy.”

The same thing is happening yet again right now in Nashville, Tennessee. As I recently noted, quoting the Nashville Tennessean, a new manager, Tasha Kennard, has attempted to make the Nashville Farmers Market more welcoming to actual local farmers by reining in vendors who resell produce. To hear some critics tell it, that rule change is part and parcel of a nationwide war on white Christians.

The new policy in Nashville has just kicked in. Its supporters concede that it will take local farmers a while to respond. It will also take a while for consumers to learn that if they really want truly local produce, they’ll have to do without certain things at certain times of year. Those changes haven’t happened yet. The result in early spring of this year has been lots of empty spaces at the market, which used to be filled with resellers. Some local shoppers who showed up at the farmers market in early April were peeved to discover that they couldn’t load up on “local” tomatoes, corn and watermelon, as they thought they used to be able to do before Kennard waltzed in and ruined everything. They, along with some of the resellers who got kicked out, let their anger rip in the comments attached to the most recent article in the Tennessean about the controversy.

Leading the charge in the comments section was someone who signed on as Timothy Whitby. He said he was a vendor and customer at the market for 15 years, who apparently got booted because he didn’t grow what he sold. “Nashville suffers while TASHA KENNARD strokes her ego…FIRE HER AND ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS INCOMPETENCE,” he said in one comment. “SHE'S A LYING POS... She needs to be fired.. she's a business KILLER. Just a stupid fool,” he said in another comment.

In a third comment, he asserted that a restaurateur who is apparently black was allowed to jump ahead of others who had been patiently waiting “for years” for a spot in the market. “This place is political, racist and running a SCAM on NASHVILLE,” Whitby alleged. In a fourth comment, he attacked a “MUSLIMS STORE” in the market that he said bought and resold everything, with a hefty markup, yet still had its place in the market.

In yet another comment, Whitby acknowledged, “I grow my own but often need things I have no time or room to plant.” So he “often” resold wholesale produce because he didn’t have “time or room” to grow it himself?! Dude, you’re not a farmer and shouldn’t expect to get a free ride on the farmers market bandwagon. Bravo to Kennard for kicking you out. Whitby was holding out hope that he might one day get back into the Nashville Farmers Market. “When the midgets liar is gone I'll go back down there,” he said, referring to Kennard. “Of course she may put a ban on white American Christians next,” he added.

Other commenters who criticized the new rules were blissfully ignorant of farmers market dynamics. One, who posted under the name Kevin Eldridge, asserted that he wants to have more local farmers in the market, but insisted that at times of the year when those “farmers” can’t grow anything, they “need to have it imported due to it not being available locally.” He proceeded to assert that the new rules “will mean the ultimate end of the farmers market [due] to lack of local farmers.” Actually, the biggest threat to local farmers is the invasion of farmers markets by resellers hawking industrially produced fruit and vegetables trucked in from California, Arizona or Mexico. Real local farmers can’t compete with them.

Another commenter, who called himself “Ron Slimmin Hall,” asserted that the new management “clearly has no idea about farming seasons, products, supply, and demand. They deserve to close and lose money if this is how they govern the Farmers Market in Nashville. Nashville is so backwards anyway, it doesn't surprise me. Country people.” That’s an odd thing to say. Most supermarkets these days, even Walmart, buy local produce when they can get it in season but truck it in from afar the rest of the year. Real “farmers markets” are supposed to be different than that. To date, many Nashville shoppers, including Hall himself, have apparently been too “backwards” to get that...and still are, as Kennard is learning.

Last time I checked, the Tennessean’s most recent article on the controversy had attracted more than 50 comments. Most were scathing in their criticism of Kennard and the new policies she has promulgated. But there were a few who understand what a “farmers market” is supposed to be about.

“Tammy Reeves” wrote: “Farmer Markets should be for farmers with locally grown produce. The stalls will fill as gardens begin producing.”

“Steve Willcox” said, “I like the stand being taken as the public were being sold produce under the guise of it being fresh and locally grown.”

“Jesse Qualls” added, “I personally appreciate and, Applaud the Boards, Decision for allowing the Real farmers to be able to sell their products.”

No Yard Sale Items at Alabama Farmers Market

A county commissioner in Limestone County, Alabama, apparently doesn’t understand what the “farmers” part of “farmers market” means. The clueless commissioner, Jason Black, recently introduced a measure to allow anyone to sell anything at the Limestone County Farmers Market, “whether it’s socks, goats or yard sale items.”

An anything-goes policy used to be in place, but yard sale items were banished from the market last year. Apparently, plenty of farmers and shoppers like it that way, according to an article in the Decatur Daily. Black’s proposal was rejected without a second vote.

Commissioner Stanley Hill explained that he has nothing against flea markets. But a farmers market “should be a place where people can go down and get their fresh, locally grown vegetables.”

Trisha Black, executive director of Spirit of Athens, led an email campaign last weekend against lifting the ban. “If it’s not just going to be farmers, don’t market it as a farmers market,” she said, explaining in an email to the county commission that dumping yard sale stuff into a farmers market “gives the perception that we are a second-hand community.”

At least one farmer spoke in favor of an anything-goes policy, explaining that it would at least bring more people into the market. But a farmer named Kenneth Robinson said the additional foot traffic didn’t do him any good. “I couldn’t sell anything when the flea market items were there,” Robinson said, according to the Decatur Daily. After yard sale items were banned, he added, “I sold everything I picked last year.”

Vermont Sheep Farmer Has Beef With Montpelier Farmers Market

Kimberly Hagen, who raises sheep at Osprey Hill Farm in Putnamville, Vermont, has a beef with the management of the farmers market in nearby Montpelier. For years, Hagen has sold products from her own sheep including yarn from the wool, sheepskins, and chair pads and rugs woven with the yarn.

She was recently told that the rugs must go. Why? Because they aren’t made on her own farm. Her appeal of the ruling was rejected in March after a hearing.

Ultimately, the board agreed to let her stay for now, at least until another rug maker in compliance with the market rules applies to get in.

Hagen was grateful for the apparent reprieve, but pronounced the ruling “absurd” in an opinion piece published April 2 in the local paper, the Times Argus.  As she explained, the wool is processed and spun by small businesses in nearby towns and woven into the rugs by other neighbors. “The rugs are a three-year project from sheep to finished product — all phases completed within the state boundary,” she wrote. “It’s not a huge enterprise, but it provides work for all these small businesses in the state.” The rugs, in short, support just the sort of local, agriculture-based small enterprise that famers markets are meant to encourage, she said.

It is all the more frustrating because the ruling has perverse effects, she asserted. “According to the market board’s interpretation of the regulations, I could go to Wal-Mart, buy skeins of yarn made in China, weave that into rugs myself, and could legitimately sell those at the market. But I cannot sell rugs made with wool from my farm, spun into yarn in Vermont, and woven by my neighbors.”

In the newspaper column she added, “I know how deeply important local markets and direct sales to consumer are for many in the business of agriculture. But for farmers who specialize in fiber products, this is especially challenging due to the cost of production and length of time required between harvest and finished product.”

I sent the manager of the farmers market, called the Capital City Farmers Market, in Montpelier an email seeking a response or an explanation of the ruling, but haven’t heard anything yet. (I visited the fine market in 2010 -- see photo to the left -- and posted a report about my visit on Seasonal Chef.) I’ll post an update here if I get a response from the manager.

Nashville Farmers Market Boots Peddlers ... and They’re Peeved

Last year, if you wanted to buy trinkets made in China or vegetables grown in Mexico, the so-called “Nashville Farmers Market” might have been a good place to look. Not this year. The market in Nashville, Tennessee, has brought in new management and, backed by a unanimous vote of its governing board, is making a concerted effort to live up to its name. From now on, the farmers market will be just that, a market where farmers sell what they grew and artisans sell what they made.

The new manager is Tasha Kennard. Here’s the press release announcing her appointment. I’m going to try to get her on phone in a few months to ask her how the new approach is working out. For now, here’s what she said to a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean in January.

“Across the country, there are really two different kinds of farmers’ markets. There are producer-only markets and there are markets where we call it, ‘anything goes.’ Our market has been an ‘anything goes’ market for a long time."

The new policy “isn’t anything that we’re trying to do to put anybody out of business. It’s more about what we’re trying to do to take this market into the future for generations to come and also become self-sufficient.”

To be sure, the new policy at the Nashville Farmers Market is putting some people out of business, and they’re peeved, as the Tennessean reported in February. One of the vendors whose business has been disrupted offered a dubious critique of the new policy.

“Anne Hardy of Hardy’s Produce, whose family’s store sells a combination of homegrown and imported produce, doubted whether farmers would have the time to grow all their products: ‘How could they also be down here if they grew 100 percent?’ she said from her spot at the market.”

But others wholeheartedly support the change:

“People go to a farmers’ market to get freshly harvested produce,” said Cindy Delvins of Delvins Farms in Franklin. “I think it’s just a great move to support true farmers in Tennessee and the area. It can only lead to a much better connection to the community.”

According to the Tennessean, those who sell in the farmers market now have to demonstrate, “among other things, ownership or leaseholder rights to their land during the entire growing season, or they must show use rights of land owned by someone else.” Vendors of prepared foods now have to use mostly home-grown inputs and handicrafts sold in the farmers market must be made by the vendor. Commercially produced flea market items are now banned. Already, the space allocated to those who “grow it, bake it or make it” has doubled to 80 percent of the large, covered market facility, the Tennessean reported. 

Margot McCormack, a Nashville restaurateur who is chair of the board that unanimously approved the new policy, defended the move in a comment to the Tennessean in January.

“We’re not trying to get rid of people. We’re just trying to better the quality and the standards that we have. It’s going to open us up to the local farmers who want to be at the market. Being that it’s called the ‘Nashville Farmers’ Market,’ we feel very wedded to the idea that farmers are really the premier piece of the puzzle.”

Bravo to McCormack, Kennard and the Nashville Farmers Market, which no longer needs the modifying adjective “so-called,” as way too many “farmers markets” do.

Bogus Farmers Are Taking a Toll on Farmers Markets

Sales at farmers markets in the United States, after soaring over the past couple of decades, have declined in recent years, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times.

A new study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that revenue at farmers markets nationwide fell by 1 percent between 2007 and 2012, after having grown by a third in each of the two previous five-year time periods. The downturn in sales has been especially dramatic in the Los Angeles area, a region that, as the Times noted, was “historically on the leading edge of the farmers market movement.”

The Times used highly questionable data to quantify the decline in sales in Los Angeles County, preposterously equating a decline in direct sales by farmers in the county (of which there are very few amidst the urban sprawl) with sales at farmers markets, which draw farmers from throughout Southern California. But market managers and farmers confirmed the basic point, that the boom times for farmers markets are over.

The story in the Times blamed the decline in sales on the glut of farmers markets in the Los Angeles area. There are now more than 200, with even more on the way, since “every little borough, every little community wants” one, as one farmers market manager quoted in the story laments.

But it’s not just that there are too many farmers markets. Too many of them are farmers markets in name only, filled with produce that vendors loaded into their trucks that morning at wholesale markets and will peddle to unsuspecting consumers as if they had grown it themselves. Savvy consumers have sniffed out the fraud, are fed up with getting cheated, and are staying away from farmers markets.

As one reader who commented on the story in the Times put it, so-called farmers markets carry “way too much sketchy produce and items with no connection to farming.” Another commenter said most of the produce at farmers markets is “either bootlegged out of large corporate farms or bought at Von’s and re-sold.” A third commenter, who used to patronize farmers markets because they were one place where you could find organic produce from local farms, said most of the stuff sold at farmers markets these days is “prepackaged foods that for the most part are not any better than in the stores.”

For years here at Truly Local, I’ve been writing about the problem of bogus farmers peddling wholesale produce at ersatz farmers markets. I have been warning for years that it is a problem that imperils the whole farmers market movement – and the real farmers who depend on those outlets for their livelihood. Now, that dire prediction may be coming to pass.

North Carolina 'Farmers Market' Makes Room for Local Farmers

One of North Carolina’s network of state-run “farmers markets” is getting a make-over. Planners hope the changes to the Charlotte regional farmers market will help it accomplish what its name suggests it is meant to do: help North Carolina farmers market their produce. 

The state-run markets have had a poor record of achieving that goal, as a study published in 2002 noted. The problem is, the large, enclosed structures, located near interstate highway interchanges, were designed to accommodate the large tractor trailer trucks used in the interstate food trade. When they were envisioned and built several decades ago, farming enterprises were consolidating, getting bigger and more mechanized, and going global, and North Carolina’s regional farmers markets were designed to accommodate those trends.

The trouble is, as a recent article in the Charlotte Observer noted:

“No one predicted the explosion in food would be small: Local production from small farms. No one expected local cheesemakers, bread bakers and small-batch sausage makers. No one guessed the biggest traffic would be household shoppers who come on Saturdays for eggs and arugula. So the market struggles with two issues: The first is growing pains – there are more farmers/bakers/makers than there are spaces. The second is the mixed message: Resellers, who buy at other markets and set up permanent tables, rub elbows with local growers, who come only on Saturdays because they have farms to run.”

The problem of “mixed messages” was highlighted in the 2002 study, which I wrote about here. Many shoppers are drawn to the venues by the “farmers market” name, and want to support local farmers and buy freshly picked produce. But in a market where local, Californian and Mexican produce are intermingled, consumers can’t be sure what they are buying. A redesign of the facility in Charlotte is intended to fix that.

“Building A, the open-air shed, will be all North Carolina growers: Fruits and vegetables, honey, farm-raised fish, livestock products like meat, cut flowers and wineries. Building B, the enclosed building, will become ‘Market Shops,’ with resellers and artisan crafters. Since bakers are artisans, most will be there.”

Out-of-state produce will be displayed in a third building. That may cause some confusion, the Observer’s reporter suggested:

“A lettuce seller from South Carolina may be two buildings from a tomato grower from North Carolina. A cheesemaker who has goats or cows may be in Building A, while a cheesemaker who buys milk from a dairy will be in C.”

That may be an inconvenience to shoppers looking to buy the cheapest produce available no matter where it came from. But shoppers who go to a “North Carolina state farmers market” thinking that will be a place where they can buy produce directly from North Carolina farmers will be better served by the new arrangement. And so will North Carolina farmers.

Found! Good Farmers Markets in Florida

Art Friedrich, who I quoted in my last post about Florida farmers markets, politely set me straight on several points. Here is his informative and thoughtful response:

"Don't assume that because there are no growers-only markets in FL, that there are no good farmers to visit at Miami markets. I want to give kudos to all the local farmers who are to be found at different markets, in addition to the three I mentioned. Some have been around for over a decade and some new: Bee Heaven Farm, Paradise Farm, LNB Groves, Farmer Fred, Treehugger Farm, the PATCH Garden in Broward, Glaser Organic Farm. They can be found at various markets, including PinecrestGardens, SW Community Farmers Market at Tropical Park, The Adrienne Arscht Center Market, Coconut Grove Farmers Market and others.

"While market operators and the resellers that many of them have welcomed are a big part of the problem, the root of the problem is also to be found in the speculative nature of Miami real estate and the suburban sprawl that has been eating up agricultural land for decades. While this happens everywhere, we have a much more bounded area to work with, so we feel the economic pressure much more intensely.  Most farms are very small, under 5 acres, undercapitalized, and we haven't had the benefit of available land supporting new farmers in other areas. Most farms produce just a few items in quantity enough to sell, so it doesn't make sense for them to sit for hours and travel for 2 hours to be at a market personally. We make that connection and have a strong connection with all of the farms we work with locally.

"I think, personally, I try to focus on the folks that are trying to make positive change and move the norms to the grower-direct experience that we desire.  If you want to talk about all of FL, I can connect you with Carmen of Florida Organic Growers, who knows many markets statewide. She runs the EBT doubling program for the state, which is only for FL grown fruits and veggies at markets. Some or most of them are producer only.  I think there a lot more to say about FL markets that is positive. I appreciate your efforts to call out the problem of resellers at our markets, but we are a unique place with unique needs and possibilities.

"I've been telling people here for years that even if you go to what seems to be a farmers market, you still have to ask where things are coming from. The great thing is that at a market, you do get that opportunity and should be encouraged to do just that!  Build a relationship with the folks you can trust at the market and learn the origin and seasonality of our produce! It's fun and rewarding."

Thanks, Art. Here, by the way, is a list of farmers markets and local farmers in the Miami area that was published last August in the Miami Herald. It lists all the markets that Art mentions: Farm Fresh: a Guide to South Florida Farmers Market.  And here is a very cool map of organic farms and farmers markets on the Florida Organic Growers’ web site.

Still Looking for a Real Farmers Market in Florida

I’ll be making a quick visit to south Florida next week, and as I am wont to do in my travels, I would like to visit a good farmers markets – you know, a place where local farmers sell what they grew and recently harvested.

Alas, my recent search was fruitless, confirming the scornful thoughts I've previously posted about Florida. (See “Do All Florida Farmers Markets Stink?” and “Grown in Peru for a Florida Farmers Market.”) There are lots of venues that call themselves farmers markets in the Sunshine State – and many that loudly tout the allegedly fresh-picked local character of the produce on sale. But there are few, if any, that are the real deal.

Art Friedrich, who moved to Miami six years ago, is trying to launch a local food movement. Such a thing was “nonexistent” in south Florida when he arrived, he said in an email. That was apparent from the “total lack of … local produce at any market. Things have progressed a bit since then, but it's a long way from the rest of the country.”

Friedrich helped found an organization called Urban Oasis Project, which aims to spark an appreciation for locally grown vegetables. The nonprofit runs Verde Farm, a 22-acre organic vegetable garden adjacent to a townhouse complex where 145 formerly homeless families live. Some of the residents work on the farm. The produce is sold at a seasonal market on site and at the Upper Eastside Farmers Market in Miami, which Friedrich manages. That market, on Saturdays, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., in Legion Park at 6599 Biscayne Blvd., is probably the “closest thing” to a real farmers market in the region, he said. But he acknowledged that it is a far cry from the genuine, grower-only farmers markets that are thriving in other parts of the country.

“There’s really only three vendors selling produce out of the 30 booths, but we represent the best. Little River Market Cooperative runs a CSA and sells veggies, seeds and plants. Nature Boyz makes guarapo juice and sells tropical fruits, many of which he grows himself. Urban Oasis Project sells our produce from Verde Farm, as well as produce from numerous other farms. We are generally all local during the season (Nov-April), but I do run the market year round and in the summer we only really have fruit, so I get Veggies mainly from up the East Coast through a distributor. I just label the origins of everything and keep it transparent.”

Friedrich said other members of his family have farms in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He’s very familiar with the farmers market scene in that part of the country. “It’s a different world down here,” he said.

My search for a farmers market to visit in south Florida next week led me to a story about another market that doesn't seem to be as up front about where the produce on sale comes from. It is in the town of Golden Gate, on the Gulf Coast. The Golden Gate Farmers Market was in the news in January when the Collier County Commissioners voted 3-2 to shut it down.

The ostensible reason was the market’s habit of posting signs on nearby roadways that violated county rules. But before the vote, one commissioner called vendors at the market “gypsies.” Market supporters jumped on that. They complained the remark revealed that the decision was “racist and ignorant” and that the commission’s main peeve with the market is that a majority of the vendors are Hispanic. Amidst the ensuing hue and cry, the commission reversed its decision.

Maybe the decision was racist. Maybe the market, which seems to be popular and well attended, is a great benefit to the community and a boon to the hard-working vendors who sell stuff there. But my peeve is that it pretends to be a farmers market when it clearly is not.

Like so many bogus “farmers markets” around the country, the one in Golden Gate is swathed in local-food sales rhetoric, leaving the clear impression that the produce you can get there was picked hours earlier somewhere nearby by those who are selling it. The market goes so far as to prominently post on its Facebook page Wikipedia's definition of a farmers market as a place “featuring foods sold directly by farmers to consumers.”

I pointed out in a comment that I posted on the Facebook page that the fruit and vegetable vendors shown in the photographs, with tables groaning under the weight of produce ranging from peppers and tomatoes to sugarcane, bananas and pineapples, obviously hadn’t grown it all on their own farms.
The market management replied by posting photos of five market stalls -– two selling prepared foods “made on her own stove” and "in her own oven,” one selling potted plants “grown in his own backyard,” a fourth selling honey “made by his own bees,” and one other selling hair bows “made by her own hands.” Not a one of those five vendors at the "farmers market" had a single fruit or vegetable for sale.

The market’s management posted one other message on the Facebook page that is responsive to my complaint. “There are flea market items in every farmers market in the county.” Fair enough. Then call them flea markets.

‘Farmers Market Fakers’ in Utah

The Salt Lake City Weekly recently ran an excellent piece by Colby Frazier explaining why the problem of ‘fake farmers’ is such an insidious threat to farmers market and the real farmers who rely on them for their livelihoods. As Frazier explained:

 “As the popularity of farmers markets has grown, so, too, have efforts by growers to supplement their crops with produce bought on the wholesale market—the same place where chain grocery stores buy it.

 “This eye on quick profits, some smaller farmers say, is cheapening their hard work, and also threatens to undo some of the more philosophical efforts being undertaken at farmers markets, which have been championed as the first line of defense against an industrial food chain that produces massive amounts of rock-bottom-priced food by relying on genetically modified plants, chemical pesticides and cheap immigrant labor.”

Self-policing among farmers is the main line of defense against cheaters, but it hasn’t stopped some from trying to con consumers and market managers anyway, Frazier reported. Maryann Alston, founder of the Wasatch Front Farmers Market, which operates markets at Wheeler Farm, Thanksgiving Point and GardnerVillage, told him she personally inspects the farmers of every vendor who sells at her markets.

 “ ‘We partner with farms that we absolutely know are growing their own produce,’ she says.  Even so, she has encountered problems. A couple of years ago, Alston says, she had to kick a farmer out because everything he had for sale had been purchased on the wholesale market. ‘You just knew,’ she says. ‘Everything looked like it was from Smith’s.’

 “A farmer herself, Alston can relate to the slight her peers feel when other farmers aren’t growing all of their produce. ‘You work so hard to grow food,’ she says. ‘You work around the clock and then you see somebody bringing in food that they didn’t pick—that they didn’t grow—and you know that they brought it in from another state. It just makes you sick.’ ”

Kevin Nash, of Earth First Eco-Farms, told Frazier that savvy consumers can help crack down on the problem, as indeed they should.

“Many customers are wising up to what might be behind those cheap tomatoes and out-of-season melons. [As Nash explained,] ‘There are people out there who realize that in order to have really cheap product, you’ve got to be cutting corners somewhere.’ ”

Rooting Out 'Shonky Stuff' Down Under

I'm not sure what 'shonky stuff' is, but it clearly doesn't belong in farmers markets. A bustling farmers market in Adelaide, Australia, has launched a new program to get rid of it as well as other undesirables – in particular, vendors selling produce that they falsely claim they grew themselves.

As I’ve been reporting here for years, that is a depressingly common problem in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, throughout the United States and probably any place where consumers can interact directly with food producers and growers.

As Graham Brookman, chairman of the Adelaide Showgrounds Farmers' Market, explained in an article posted on Rural, an Australian Broadcasting Corporation web site, some producers have succumbed to the temptation presented by customers who spend $10 million a year on farm products at the market. Customers are often willing to pay premium prices for fruits and vegetables that were presumably grown by the person selling it and harvested just a day or two before, hence better that what can be found in a supermarket. That creates an opening for unscrupulous operators to buy and resell wholesale produce and pocket the profits – without ever getting their hands dirty on a real farm.

Under the new program, Brookman said, “We can send trained inspectors onto farms to make sure that all of our producers are doing the right thing. We want to make sure there's no shonky stuff and they're not picking up goods from other producers and selling it as their own.”

The program will protect consumers, he said. He might have added that it will also protect real farmers from unfair competition from imposters.

Kudos to the market in Adelaide for doing something to crack down on the problem.

Clueless Manager Calls Local-Only Rules ‘Silly’

The Washington Post earlier this year reported that coffee roasters are “bitter” that they aren’t allowed to sell their foreign-grown coffee beans at farmers markets in the area that are managed by FreshFarm Markets. The organization, which runs 11 highly successful markets in the Washington D.C. area (including two I’ve visited, in Annapolis and at Dupont Circle in the city), has admirably strict rules about who can sell at the markets: namely, only real farmers who have grown what they are selling within a 200-mile radius of the market.

Strictly enforced rules like that are exactly what separate the best farmers markets, such as those run by FreshFarm Markets, from pseudo-farmers markets, where unwitting consumers pay premium prices for the same stuff they could buy at their local supermarket, thinking it was actually grown nearby and picked a short time earlier by those who are selling it.

The Post’s reporter apparently doesn’t get the distinction, dismissively referring to FreshFarm Markets as “picky” and “purist.” The excluded coffee vendors don’t get it either. What part of the word “farmers” in “farmers markets” don’t they understand?

Most befuddling of all, the manager of another so-called farmers market in the Washington area also, apparently, doesn’t get it. Mitch Berliner, co-founder of the Bethesda Central Farm Market, referring to FreshFarm Markets’ strict rules about what can be sold at their markets, tells the reporter that his market doesn’t “get into that silliness.” He is proud to say that at his market, he lets a coffee roaster sell coffee beans grown who knows how many thousands of miles away, a fishmonger sell shrimp from the Carolinas and another vendor sell olive oil from California. Well then why not tomatoes from Mexico and grapes from Chile? Perhaps that’s what shoppers at his market, drawn by the promise of buying fresh-picked produce from actual local farmers, should wonder.

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.

Farmers Hurt by Peddling at L.A.-Area Markets

The proliferation of farmers markets has been great for consumers but not necessarily such a good deal for farmers. Increasing numbers of growers have been speaking out about the challenges and diminishing returns of selling produce at farmers markets. A report in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007, for instance, broached the subject of whether farmers markets are a “broken model” for supporting local farmers. David Karp, writing recently in the Los Angeles Times, reported on the growing frustrations among some long-time vendors at Los Angeles area farmers market. Karp cites a proliferation of peddlers as one of the problems that is forcing some truly local farmers out of famers markets.

Robert Knight Jr., who grows citrus fruit in the Redlands area and has sold at Los Angeles area farmers markets for years, is one such farmer who has dropped out. “He loves the original concept of certified farmers markets — farmers selling directly to consumers — but became discouraged by the increasing prevalence of large farms, employees who had little connection with their farms and peddlers who illicitly sold produce bought from other farms or wholesalers,” Karp reported.

‘Now when you go to a farmers market, it's almost like a mall experience, where you see the same vendors all over,’ Knight said. ‘The added value of being small and really local isn't as important as it used to be.’

Do All Florida Farmers Markets Stink?

That’s a question posed in a comment on Chowhound in 2006 that has drawn 187 responses to date. The answer from most who have weighed in is a resounding “yes!”

It seems there are far more sno-cones, T-shirts and sunglasses on sale at “farmers markets” in Florida than fruits and vegetables. And the produce offered for sale at most so-called farmers markets in the state is plastic-wrapped, supermarket stuff, often sold right “out of boxes that pretty obviously were bought wholesale that morning,” the comments assert. Some “farmers markets” in the state, like the one in Jacksonville mentioned recently here at Truly Local, make no bones about the fact that they offer produce from as far away as Canada and Peru. Many of the reports on the Chowhound thread about visits to markets in the state pronounced them “shameful,” “pathetic” and a “terrible disappointment.”

There are exceptions, by some accounts. One commentator, for example, recommended the Audubon Park Community Market, which is open every Monday night from 5 to 10 p.m. in Orlando, as a place where only vendors who grew it themselves are allowed to sell produce.

To be sure, the market’s rules include a few loopholes that would allow vendors to resell produce they didn’t grow. The rules also declare that the market “will not be bound to apply a particular set of selection criteria in every instance” and reserves “unconditional discretion to accept or refuse anyone as a market vendor.” However, the rules also state that priority will be give to “regional farmers and producers who bring products that are 100 percent grown, harvested, produced or caught within 150 miles of Orlando.” Also, no vendor can resell products without prior approval of the market director, and if approval is granted, “any farm item or product not produced by the vendor must have labeling designating the farm/original source.” To help assure that these rules are followed, all farmers who sell at the market are subject to annual inspection, with advance notice, and can also be inspected if there are complaints about the origin of the fruits and vegetables they are selling.

Another poster on Chowhound held up the West Palm Beach Greenmarket as a truly local farmers market. It is a Saturday morning market that appears to be open in the winter only, from mid-October through mid-April.

Indeed, the rules posted on the market’s web site seem well designed to assure the market’s integrity. The market has two slots for vendors reselling Florida produce, a loophole presumably designed to let in a few, select specialty items that aren’t produced nearby. But those vendors are far outnumbered by local farmers. The market’s rules allow space for up to 40 vendors selling fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, or herbs that they have grown themselves. These “farmer/growers,” as defined in the rules, “must own, rent, lease or sharecrop the land AND practice the agricultural arts, i.e., s/he must grow from seeds, transplants, or cuttings” and “must be responsible for all production operations.”

Are there other truly local farmers markets in Florida?