Truly Local

Clueless Shoppers Rally for Right to Be Ripped Off

In the midst of a brouhaha this summer at a farmers market in Arlington, Virginia, a misguided gang of commentators on a news Web site that reported on the controversy has angrily skewered the market’s management for simply trying to enforce clear-cut rules against reselling produce.

The uproar began early in the summer when one of the largest vendors at the market, C&T Produce, allegedly piled its table high with out-of-season produce that could not possibly have come from its own farm. Other farmers complained, and the management responded by kicking C&T out of the market, which touts itself as a producer-only venue for the direct sale of fruits and vegetables grown within a radius of 125 miles of Arlington.

That’s when the floodgates opened to angry tirades in the forum section of ARLnow.com, which in its initial report indicated that the only concern was the vendor’s low prices, and didn’t mention the issue of questionable sourcing until a week later. Convinced that a farm that was simply giving its customers a good deal had gotten a bum rap, most of the commentators aimed their venom not at C&T but at the organization that manages the market, the Clarendon Alliance.

“I hate what America has become,” wrote a poster called Darwin. “It used to be when someone produced a better product at a better price they were allowed to succeed, now it’s called ‘not fair’ and they are punished.”

“I thought a farmer’s market would be the kind of place where small business people could sell a good product, at a fair price, that they determined. I had no idea it was a oligopoly where prices were set, and those who refused to toe the line were cast out,” said NorthArlington Guy.

“Competition is GOOD!,” added Peter.

Other commentators urged C&T to “sue the pants” off the market management, while others heaped scorn on the “hipster doofuses” and organic yuppies who patronized such a supposedly un-American marketplace.

At least a few commentators understood that there was actually more to the story. As Doug noted in response to those demanding that C&T be allowed back into the market, “yeah…and then anyone can sell super cheap produce from factory farms around the world at farmer’s markets under the guise of ‘local produce’ and they’ll put VA, MD, and PA farmers out of business. That will truly be a great day…and I’ll get my sawdust tasting tomatoes at a rock bottom price. Awesome!!!!”

It certainly didn’t help matters that the market's managers were bizarrely tongue-tied. When ABC 7 TV reporter Stephen Tschida arrived on the scene, camera in tow, to report that C&T was kicked out only because its produce was "too good and too cheap," he asked Susan Anderson, of the Clarendon Alliance, for a comment. She could only manage to stammer, "Oh man, it's like, I don't -- please do not, wait, can we just cut this please?"

Why couldn’t she simply say that there was a question as to whether C&T was complying with the rules governing the Arlington Farmers' Market, now in its 31st year? Those rules couldn’t be clearer on the market’s web site:

“The Arlington Farmers' Market was founded on the producer-only principle: all products sold must be raised or made by the producer. The market has flourished under this rule. The producer-only rule nurtures local farmers and insures the freshest and highest quality foods possible for our customers. NO RE-SALE OF ANY PRODUCT IS ALLOWED, EVER.”

“Producers of any kind must come from within a 125-mile radius of Arlington, VA….The radius limit helps support local farmers by providing them a direct market opportunity.”

Anderson also could have said that slipping wholesale produce into the market isn’t all-American competition, its old-fashioned lying and thievery. If such a policy means that prices for some items will sometimes be higher at farmers markets, so be it. Any consumer who wants to pay the lowest possible price for produce and doesn’t care where it comes from already has plenty of places to shop. They are called supermarkets.

As for C&T Fruits and Vegetables, by mid-summer Cooperative Extension inspectors had reportedly checked out the farm, discovered that at least by then, the vendor was harvesting on its own acreage the items that it was selling at the market. So the management let C&T back in.

Virginia Market Capitulates to ‘Consumer Demand’

A majority of vendors at the farmers market in Warrentown, Va., have voted to approve a controversial plan that would allow them to resell wholesale produce. The market has been a “producer-only” operation in recent years, according to a March 19 report on the hotly disputed proposal in the Fauquier Times-Democrat. But the vendors who pressed for the change asserted that customers are unhappy with the lack of variety.

Sabrey Alshakarwi, who has been peddling teas and spices at the market for more than 20 year, complained that he was “getting a headache” explaining to customers why the farmers market couldn’t match what the local Giant supermarket was offering. He was in favor of giving customers what they want, and so he sided with the majority of vendors who considered the proposal at the market association’s annual meeting. On a 10-5 vote that opponents say was tainted by low turnout, the vendors decided to switch from a producer-only market to what they will call a “Virginia-grown market.”

Under the new rule, up to 20 percent of what vendors will be allowed to sell at the farmers market can consist of items purchased elsewhere and resold. Supposedly, it will be produce grown by other Virginia farmers, a restriction to be enforced by requiring resellers to show receipts. But some of the farmers who sell at the market and strongly oppose the plan are skeptical. They fear the real growers, and in turn the entire market, will be undermined by even a limited encroachment of wholesale produce. As Kelly Alm, a reporter for the Times-Democrat, noted:

Jim Mello, who has been selling at the Warrenton market for 21 years, said he wants the market to stay a producers-only market. “It’s compelling that you can stand in front of a customer and say, ‘I grew this,’ and tell them how you grew it, and what you put on it, and even encourage them to grow it themselves,” he said.

Eric Plaskin of Waterpenny Farm in Rappahannock agreed. “I grow everything I sell,” Plaskin said. “I think it's dangerous to mess with that.” Plaskin said that his economic success is based on being part of a market selling locally produced food. “This is not about reselling,” Plaskin said. “It's about going directly to the source.”

Sue Olinger, a new market board member said that the transition would allow vendors to bring in early and late crops from other parts of Virginia, making “the market more viable for the entire year.” … However, Mello also pointed out how opening the market to early crops risks “taking the top of the market,” and forcing those vendors who produce the same product to lower their price.

Others wondered how the 20 percent would be quantified and enforced. “Are we talking 20 percent of the market value, 20 percent of volume, 20 percent of the quantity in the display space?” Plaskin asked.

All of the vendors at the annual meeting agreed on one thing. If the market does abandon its producer-only policy, vendors who are selling products they did not grow should at least be required to put up signs disclosing that to customers. As Alm observed, those who don’t resell produce may well also choose to let shoppers know that. “Those who grow all of their own produce will most likely want to market as such to continue attracting customers to whom buying locally and directly from the producer is important,” Alm wrote.

Local Food and Fuel Efficiency

Anthony Flaccavento, who farms in the foothills of the Virginia Appalachians and sells his harvest at a farmers market in nearby Abingdon, is fed up with the naysayers who are popping up all over the place these days asserting that locally grown food isn’t so fuel-efficient after all. As noted here at Truly Local, the New York Times reported in December on a study showing that so many factors come into play in assessing any particular food item’s carbon footprint that it’s impossible to make generalizations. Newsweek recently added another dig:

It's the golden rule of the local-food movement: the fewer miles that food travels, the better for the environment. The only problem is, it may not be true.

Flaccavento weighed in with his answer to the skeptics in a commentary published in the Washington Post. Those who have “disparaged local food economies” are just plain wrong, he asserts, laying out some simple math to prove his point.

“A full tractor-trailer hauls about 32,000 pounds of produce. On average, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, this food travels about 1,750 miles from farm to market, in trucks that get about 5.5 miles per gallon. That's 320 gallons of fuel to transport 32,000 pounds, or about a gallon of fuel for every 100 pounds of food.

“My farm is an eight-mile round trip from the Abingdon farmers market. Our '94 Toyota pickup gets 15 miles to the gallon, fully loaded, so my trip to and from the market uses just over a half gallon of gas. We take and sell an average of 1,600 pounds of fresh produce every Saturday morning. This works out to 3,200 pounds of food for every gallon of fuel expended. That's 32 times more efficient.”

Of course, some farmers drive farther to markets and sell less, and some consumers drive farther to farmers markets and buy less than they would at a supermarket. Flaccavento acknowledged those variables and conceded that when they get tossed into the mix, the math is no longer so simple. He is not a hardcore locavore. But he remains firm in his conviction about the environmental superiority of locally-based food economies.

“When my wife and I get up at 5 on Saturday morning to start packing our truck, a cup of strong coffee and a glass of orange juice make it a little easier. So we're not dogmatic about local foods. But we also know, first hand, that locally produced foods are increasingly abundant, convenient and rewarding. The critics notwithstanding, buying local food is a sensible way to eat well, save fuel and reduce your carbon footprint.”

Fox Sponsoring Henhouse?

The Whole Foods corporation is no different than any other food retailing juggernaut, as far as many small farmers are concerned. It needs such high volumes of a uniform product that the company's stores are out of their reach as place to sell their crops.

Belying the company's image as no friend of small local farmers, a Whole Foods grocery store in Fair Oaks, a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C., is making its parking lot available for a farmers market every Sunday. The store, which doesn't charge the vendors anything, couldn't be happier with the arrangement, according to the Connection Newspapers, quoting Dale Stirzel, Whole Foods' assistant store team leader.

"The response has been overwhelmingly positive. People are eating produce the way it should taste — fresh, in season and at the peak of ripeness. The vendors aren't affiliated with Whole Foods and don't have to pay for their spaces or share their profits with us. But their products have to be either grown or produced on their farms. Whole Foods supports local products and likes being a place where the community meets. And even if they don't buy produce from us on Sundays, we're there for all their other needs."

'Consumers Don't Care,' Extension Agent Insists

In an article about how to sell at a farmers market, Virginia Cooperative Extension horticultural specialist Anthony Bratsch, of the Virginia Tech Department of Horticulture, offers step-by-step instructions on how "farmers" can hoodwink gullible consumers.

They'll shell out cash for anything if the wily vendor uses the right lighting, color schemes and product display gimmicks, Bratsch seems to suggest. For instance, keeping some produce in bulk bins "reinforces the idea that this is a farm market." Yet it doesn't matter a bit whether the produce in the bins actually came directly off a farm or not, as long as it looks pretty, Bratsch insists:

"Customers do not penalize growers who also buy and resell products. Available information indicates that customers shop at a farm market because of freshness and quality of products. They do not indicate that they are disturbed if some of the products may be purchased elsewhere."

The only good thing to say about that remark is that it was published in 2003, and surely by now it is obsolete. All the recent evidence (including a bookshelf full of new books about the virtues of buying locally grown food) indicates that many shoppers are flocking to farmers markets specifically because they want to avoid buying food trucked in from afar. They are angry and feel like they've been robbed when they learn that, all too often at slackly managed markets, that's exactly what they're getting.

Few Tears for Threatened 'Farmers Market' in Roanoke

Authorities in Roanoke, Virginia, are considering banishing a "farmers market" from a prime location it has long occupied on Tuesday evenings in the downtown Market Square, according to the Roanoke Times. If some vendors are chagrined that the possible demise of the market isn't raising much of hew and a cry among the citizens, perhaps they should blame lax or perhaps nonexistent enforcement of rules, if in fact there are any such rules, assuring that the farmers market is what it purports to be, a place where farmers sell what they actually grow.

Judging from reader comments posted on the newspaper's message board, some shoppers have long-since recognized that many of the vendors at the market aren't farmers at all. As a result, they are cynical about the market and aren't exactly rallying to its defense. As a reader named Travelguy observes:

"The Roanoke City Market is changing!! If one ever notices a lot of the vendors are not selling produce, they are selling jewelry and other accessories. The farmers around Roanoke are not coming into the city like in years past since a lot of small communtiies have their own farmers markets."

Reader CharlesVA adds:

"The market is disgusting and needs to move to a spot somewhere out on Williamson Road. Its dirty, full of bums, and crowded. Nothing is more annoying than trying to walk down the street and some clueless couple is standing in the middle of the sidewalk gawking at some piece of trash artwork or painted rock while blocking your path."

A reader named Connor apparently wants to refute CharlesVA's dim view of the farmers market, but in the process seems to lend some credence the complaint:

"I wonder why you feel so strongly-dirty stalls, street people, poorly marked cross walks, narrow sidewalks, "resold" fruits and vegetables, little outdoor entertainment, dining, and parking,-perhaps many of these would apply."

The moral of the story: Farmers markets that will let anyone sell anything may appear to draw crowds, but they won't build a loyal clientele.