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.
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