An increasing percentage of the produce sold at the thriving farmers market in Santa Monica, Calif., winds up at high-end restaurants and gourmet grocery stores scattered all over the country, reports Russ Parsons in the Los Angeles Times. That’s because wholesale produce companies have become major buyers at the market, held each Wednesday and Saturday, where I have been a regular for years and years.
That is not exactly what farmers markets are supposed to be for. They are supposed to be venues for sales directly to consumers. But farmers markets are also supposed to help generate business for local farms, and if possible, revive entire local food economies. And if the market in Santa Monica is doing just that by helping its farmers hook up with some big customers, who can complain about that?
Well, chefs can complain. Many of the leading chefs in Los Angeles have been major local supporters of the city’s farmers markets, particularly the well managed one in Santa Monica, for years. Now, they often have to watch as wholesale guys cart off cases full of the best stuff. A number of chefs expressed their concerns to Parsons for his story, “A Food Fight Over the Cream of the Crop.”
“Though no hard figures are kept, some growers say that as much as half of what they sell at the market is bought by produce companies. As a result, what had long been a kind of informal meeting place for many of Southern California's foodies and chefs is no longer quite so clubby. What chefs once regarded as a combination of culinary laboratory and kaffeeklatsch -- a place to find new ingredients and ideas and swap gossip, sometimes seemingly in equal proportions -- is more and more a place for big business.”
Santa Monica market manager Laura Avery, who has run the operation since 1982, just a year after it opened, is caught in the middle of the conflict. She is considering some innovative solutions. She told Parsons that one idea under consideration is to create a separate market for wholesalers, either at a different location or earlier in the morning at the site of the regular farmers market.
“There is certainly a wide range of opinions among farmers, among chefs and among the produce companies,” she said. “They're all trying to get more small-farm produce into restaurants, which is great. But we want to be sure to keep stuff on the tables for regular customers and smaller restaurants who come every week… Certainly, we're victims of too much good stuff, of too many happy customers. But I think we can make it work.”
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