I have a goal to write each week here; I hope this is helpful for all of you.
Wanted to share my current reading list in the hopes that it may spark a discussion of what you are reading:
The Brinkley book has been fascinating, not only because I’ve been a huge fan of Rachel Carson since the 1980s (who I believe has never received her due for exponentially increasing awareness of environmental extinctions and illness’ connections to unchecked pesticide use) but also because this author has a talent for creating a compelling story around the leaders of the environmental movement which is spurring my thinking around my farmers market book currently in draft form.
This Rome travel book is because I will be joining many of my fellow market peers and attending the World Farmers Market Coalition meeting in May.
Graeber’s incredible analysis into how direct action groups collect and organize is another keeper of his for me from this late great writer.
This book about my home state and one of its fishing community is a new one for my bookshelf after I saw and heard its thoughtful author at a recent literary festival in New Orleans. As someone who has worked closely with a few commercial fishers and so try to keep an ear and eye out to be always learning more about their future, I am expecting this to give me great insight on what that community is facing in our current political, ecological and cultural “spend-down” time.
Jackson MS is a place that doesn’t get enough notice nor enough support from its state nor the feds for the challenges they face or enough credit for the innovative work happening there from many including from Cooperation Jackson. Also, anytime I can read in detail about food access within one community, I find it offers many lessons I can use in many places.
One thing I do each December is to think about my work year, what I wished I had accomplished and what I might do in the next year. I am sure this list is no surprise to any of the hardworking market operators and market partners that I wish I had done more for in 2022, but in these exhausting years of the COVID crisis, there has been a growing and mostly unmet need to offer organizational services such as grant writing assistance, board development and governance audits, staff Human Resources support, and product development for market vendors.
In 2023, I am determined to redouble my efforts to increase support for farmers market operators through more directed technical assistance and resource collection and creation, both in my staff role at Farmers Market Coalition and in my small role in my own time working as a consultant directly with markets across the US and with the newly emerging World Farmers Markets Coalition.
Here are some of my 2023 goals:
Continue connecting climate activists and funders to community food leaders so our work can be named, outlined, and funded in the climate mitigation work happening across the US and globe. This includes seeking funding for a disaster recovery toolkit for farmers markets;
Pick up new skills and tools including completing a course on mapping networks which I believe is an excellent tool for market leaders to know exactly where they need to deploy their limited resources for maximum effect;
I also have carried around a longer term goal to start too seek funding for an FM Anthology book; once secured, asking writers and activists to contribute pieces on the vision and history of the modern market movement that illustrate how it has contributed so much to localized health and wealth initiatives in thousands of places across the globe;
Working more on a regional effort here in New Orleans named the Pontchartrain Network to increase connections across the dozen or so Louisiana parishes and MS counties that rely on the lake watershed. That work will focus on educational efforts to all civic leaders about how to achieve increased production and consumption of food grown in the region;
At FMC, we will be seeking a new Executive Director in 2023, as Ben Feldman plans to step down after a successful run the last 3 + years (although I certainly hope he will remain as our policy person);
I expect to help the authors of the Anti Racist Farmers Market Toolkit with their goal of implementation of its strategies in markets by helping them secure funding for that work. If we get those efforts well underway, we can begin to seek leaders in the indigenous community to add their own content towards similar strategies so the modern market system can also be a more useful tool for tribal nations that are prioritizing culturally meaningful production and healthy options for their residents; to that same end, our work with USDA supporting a pilot of 1890 land-grant universities to add farmers markets to their campuses has already taught our team a great deal about how to help their efforts and we would hope to add more sites and 1994 land-grant universities and Hispanic-serving universities in future rounds of that work;
We will also be working on the new Regional Food Business Centers that USDA has added as a new level of support to regional food systems, and expecting to play a large role in the work with farmers markets across all of the centers;
Our food access team will seek to expand its funding to assist market organizations and states that are branching out past GusNIP funding for permanent incentive and benefit program support, as well as continue to support the large pool of GusNIP grantees whose work often becomes the realpolitik for food access decisions at USDA.
And with my decades of work on finding appropriate and relevant evaluation systems for community food system leaders to use (rather than funder or academic versions of what they think evaluation should mean), we will continue to create and support software and analog tools to conduct low-intensity evaluation of the many many impacts that markets have on their community, and in helping those with data turn them into infographics and analysis they can use to increase funding and awareness.
One other priority will remain: the development of FMC into serving a permanent role as the dynamic, stable, and effective go-to entity for the estimated 9,000 market communities in the US, as well as supporting our partners in similar sectors such as CSAs, farm stands, agritourism, and community gardening to be able to do the same. I am happy to report that that internal work is being ably managed by our Deputy Director Willa Sheikh and enthusiastically aided by our entire stellar FMC team which I am deeply proud to work alongside. Learn more about them here: https://farmersmarketcoalition.org/joinus/team/
So that’s my plan. I’d love to hear some of your plans around farmers market work and maybe even build a support network for those of us who do this work. If so, leave a comment.
“This modest but effective legislation will go a long way to ensuring workers have the tools they need to have a seat at the table they worked to build.”
Over the weekend, I cracked open the eagerly awaited/just published “Kuni: A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Connection” authored by Tsuyoshi Sekihara and Richard McCarthy.
Sekihara is the founder and leader of the Japanese RMO (Regional Management Organization) Kamiechigo Yamagata Fan Club. This entity is tasked with creating kuni (community) in an estimated 25 villages in rural Japan, making its home in Nakanomota.
McCarthy is the founder of the regional organization Market Umbrella in New Orleans LA, and (while he and I worked there) had set its region as “Gator Alley” or “Gumbo Nation” along the Gulf Coast. In true U.S. fashion, neither description of our region was precise (or as Richard rightly describes it, “light and loose” versus Sekihara’s “grounded” region) but they came pretty close:
Food Regions of the US (Nabhan et al)
Mirror Images of Each Other
In its opening pages, McCarthy describes the opportune meeting with Sekihara that came via outside funders and leaders bringing he and others to Japan, and where the two recognized their common vision which can now be shared via this framework.
Yet kuni is not just another term for local or revitalization but is meant to create something that new.
Be compact but contain all of the elements needed for human life
Have the right scale
Balance between bridging and bonding activities
Choose pluralism over tribalism
Be close to nature
or as beautifully said in there: “To trade on assets adored by outsiders but curated by locals.”
Sekihara’s RMO is tasked with creating kuni’s preconditions and is partially funded by overseeing government projects as well as creating products that can be exported (although the raw materials must originate from within the RMO.) There are other RMOs in Japan, but none with the depth of the KYFC. (It may also be helpful to share that “fan clubs” are common in Japanese society for all types of organizations including corporations, many with their own mascots.)
By having McCarthy as the co-author, the application of Sekihara’s ideas can be shared through the hundreds of communities that McCarthy has worked or visited via his work with Market Umbrella, Slow Food US, Slow Food International, as president of the new World Farmers Market Coalition, or his own current global Think Like Pirates firm.
You’ll find the steps that Sekihara took to his own “J-Turn” to KYFC with descriptions of the conditions he found as well as the challenges, including the shocking level of disrepair, the challenge that he calls “the Beast,” and the many gatekeepers/dictators he encountered and their power hoarding — all of which any organizer should be able to recognize in their own communities and possibly even within their own organization.
The book is rich with lists of lessons and examples for any organizer including the brilliant Rice Covenant (which is more complex than you’d think), place polygamy, the concepts of equilibrium, circularity, and spirals, the 2 Loops theory, Richard’s pirate ship framework, examples of kuni-style organizing from around the world, and (a personal favorite of mine), explanations from both leaders as to why holding onto single proxies such as “local” or relying on national or global certifications can be entirely too limiting.
It is available everywhere with a U.S. tour by McCarthy imminent (email him through his site which is linked above) if you think you can create an event with him) to invite these visionary ideas into your work.
Leaving my London KY hotel while it’s still dark, I head north to Berea. As always, I’m gonna arrive too early even for the farmers market and for that reason (but also to soak up the local) I choose the state highway over the interstate, or as author William Least Heat Moon named these old roads, the blue highways. This road runs almost perpendicular to or crossing I-75 for most of the trip, at times less than a few hundred feet separate them. When it does come that close to the big booming noise of traffic just to the left, I look at the houses and businesses that have an interstate behind them and this road in front and wonder how those living there felt to be spared from the bulldozers and if “spared” is how they felt and or still feel..
Route 25 has existed since 1926 between Georgia and Michigan – well really now just to Covington KY just across the bridge from OH since I-75 eliminated all traces of it in Ohio and Michigan. It was once known as the Dixie Highway, which was the first road to connect the Midwest to the South starting in 1914.
At first, I am momentarily blinded by cars (trucks mostly) heading the other way, and can see little that makes this drive worthwhile. But as the light starts to peek over the horizon, the shape of the surrounding area can be seen. Hills with sunlight highlighting the reds, oranges and green colors with scattered homes (almost all painted white), old barns (almost never painted but left to weather in browns and greys), churches (mostly red brick), and work buildings (almost all with dozens of mechanical items crowding them) placed throughout. In each coven of buildings, the oldest are being allowed to melt back into the soil rather than tearing them down, the next oldest leaning leeward but still probably functional, and the newest most often designed in one story ranch style or mobile home. The main road is newly paved (thanks Big Govt) and I pass hilly gravel roads on either side with names like Old Crab Orchard Road, Old Hare Road, and can see tantalizing signs for John Swift’s Lost Silver Mine and Daniel Boone’s Historic Campground.
The road crosses the Daniel Boone National Forest which covers 21 counties of Kentucky with more than 708,000 acres in its glorious free space (once again thanks Big Govt). I pass through Livingston in Rockcastle County which is one of the park’s Trail Towns, where you can expect to find supplies and guides and food for traversing this rugged park.
My trip is quiet and even peaceful as few vehicles are heading my way, and likely because of the next door interstate, no 18-wheeled trucks roar up behind or on side of me, menacing my little van.
Once in Berea, I spy the farmers market with its gorgeous new pavilion which is easily seen from all directions. From the road, I can see the vendors are still setting up and, knowing how anxious it can make them to have someone wandering around before they are ready, I instead take a right and head downtown, feeling confident I will find a good coffee somewhere near the famed college. More indications of Big Government doing its job appear on the way, including remodeled bridges, pedestrian crosswalks, smooth streets. I spy a jumble of signs that indicate culturally significant activities to the left, so I turn into an area named Artisans Village District which is a cluster of little cottages with retail signs designed to pull visitors looking for culture and craft.
Not much going on there yet, but I find the open bagel and coffee house on the main road on its edge and get a honey wheat with maple bacon cream cheese with a good espresso and sit down in its modern, well-lit and friendly space.
The line grows as soon as I sit and I note the number of families and working men and women already up and at it, all smoothly ordering a NY style bagel and artisanal coffee in Kentucky.
I finish my bagel and head to the market as it is opening time. I try to get to a market at its opening, and make some mental notes. Most of those things I look for do not have a right or a wrong way, they just reveal its culture. Things I look for:
Are all vendors set up by opening time?
Does the market indicate opening time with a bell or other manner?
Does the market have a welcome tent?
Are vendors offloading (walking their items in) or are their vehicles directly behind their table?
Is signage uniform or does it vary table by table?
How much diversity is there among the people vending? How about in its shoppers?
Do any vendors or the market indicate they can process government benefits like SNAP or FMNP?
Are there craft vendors?
Are there hot food vendors?
And so on. The list is extensive but with practice I have found I can note many things without being overt about it. Most of what I learn comes from the conversations with market manager and vendors and this day was no different.
I started by having a pleasant chat with its manager Olivia, who had a beautifully set up market welcome tent all ready to go, with SNAP signage very noticeable for those seeking to use their benefit dollars there. I assume that the tent with its Doubling Dollars information printed on it is likely given to the market by the entity that manages the program in Kentucky.
The overall impression of the tent and of the market is one of extreme tidiness and with good sight lines.
I start at the right row of the 2 parallel rows, with a woman selling a variety of goods including persimmons, so I engage in a conversation about the varieties she sells. She knows a great deal about them and we talk about how shoppers now ask for them and how they are a food that is likely seeing a resurgence because of farmers markets (since so many varieties do not ship well to be able to sit in grocery coolers for weeks at a time.) When I ask, she (like most of their vendors) agreeably takes cards for payment for her goods. Having the ability to to swipe credit and debit cards has only recently moved to almost universal acceptance among vendors at many markets. Where it has happened all note the COVID era of risk mitigation as its cause when some markets were unable to use wooden tokens or were forced into drive through sales or unable to open at all. In all cases, farmers had to find an added method of processing payments and did. Now market managers happily tell shoppers to go through the vendors to swipe credit and debit even while SNAP is usually still handled at market level to everyone’s appreciation.
I see a friendly couple next to the persimmon seller who also have a variety of goods on their tables, including micro greens and beautiful tiny turnips. I would dearly love some micro green sprouts but being on the road I worry I wont be able to keep them safe in my coolers. I am regretfully about to turn away when I realize they also dehydrate and grind their microgreens into a powder, which I can store. I once again ask if I can use a credit card- they immediately answer yes but then cannot get a signal to process the card. The farmer grows anxious with the delay, although I am not as anxious. He mentions the signal is intermittent at this new pavilion and we discuss whether the city or the market can and should add a signal strengthener nearby. I finally root about my wallet to find that I have the exact dollar amount in there to cover my purchase; I offer it instead and he asks me if that’s “okay” to take my cash. “Of course” I answer and I silently turn that exchange over and over in my head because cash being used as the secondary payment method is such a new development between customers and vendors at farmers markets.
I walk past other vendors beyond theirs but I keep my distance from the tables because I can see that they have vegetables I am unlikely to purchase. I do, however, catch their eye and say hello and, when I feel moved to do so, comment on their table or its products. I know that being ignored when selling in an open space can be uncomfortable and even painful and that a friendly hello can make a quiet sales hour seem slightly less scary.
I speed up to get to the second row and note that this has a slightly different feel with (seemingly) more younger or newer vendors on this side. (Which makes me wonder if vendors choose their own space or are assigned).
Close to the middle of the row, there is a kombucha and nutrition bar vendor with a tap encased in a beautiful wooden dispenser for cold brew and samples of kombucha. The vendor tells me the vendor 2 tents down (who is seated to the back working on other craftwork while someone else handles sales), made the display. We have a longish discussion about markets and intermediate sales for their business. They tell me they sell to a number of small businesses in the area but expect to maintain their farmers market presence to support farmers and to grow their business there, maybe even taking on more farmers markets in the future.
I share tidbits of my research on markets including that many of the first “modern era” (1970-) markets began in university towns like Berea because the back-to-landers decided to stay and grow organic food, so then created many of these new “grow it to sell it” markets; I say that it is interesting to me that markets in these towns continue to impress me with how they hold and even grow markets’ role in improving sustainability and introducing the area to products like hers Her quiet and firm reply that “it shows they (markets) are really about the shared culture” strikes me as rich with simple truth as we stand in an open pavilion on a cold fall morning in a town of 15,000 or so.
Finally I realize I am blocking a very polite shopper behind me and move away. I catch the eye of the woman I had purchased the persimmons from and smile from afar in thanks as I head toward my van to drive it to the next town.
The USDA offered the first glimpse of their new Regional Food Business Centers approach via Zoom. Listed below is a recording link from today’s session for those who want to see if firsthand:
“USDA will fund at least six regional centers, to include a national tribal center and at least one center serving each of three targeted areas: Colonias (counties on the US/Mexico border), persistent poverty or other communities of high need/limited resources areas of the Delta and the Southeast, and high need areas of Appalachia as well as centers in other regions of the country.
The USDA Regional Food Business Centers will support a more resilient, diverse, and competitive food system. These Regional Food Centers will support producers by providing localized assistance to access local and regional supply chains, including linking producers to wholesalers and distributors. They will provide technical assistance needed to access new markets, access to federal, state, and local resources, and will assist small- and mid-sized producers in overcoming barriers to market access, with a focus on underserved farmers, ranchers, and food businesses. No match is required. (The minimum request is at 15 million to a maximum of 50 million for each proposal and are due by November 22, 2022.)
I am always scouring for new books that may help our markets to advance their system change work. One major lesson I work to keep in my front mind is how best to assist market operators in prioritizing working as networks rather than “silos.”
In many of those posts, I consider the effect of climate chaos and civil unrest on the still-fragile, but always-energetic pop up farmers market sector, and suggest that the success rate of reducing organizer and producer burnout and increasing engagement is almost entirely dependent on thinking regionally, or as you will hear later, territorially.
The idea of regionalism may seem already knit into the community food movement, but I see plenty of examples of food leaders misinterpreting true regionalism. One example is how few urban farmers market managers and volunteers visit their rural and exurban vendor farms regularly. Or, how few community food leaders speak up for regional planning issues which directly impact their farmers and other producers. And I talk to plenty of rural farmers market operators who bypass the replicable operational lessons that their urban sistren and brethren market operators have to share, or mistakenly feel they don’t need to focus on justice work.
And long before 2022, all organizers were struggling with the rapidly unfolding and difficult work of assessing and mitigating disruptions, either because they thought only hyper-locally or, didn’t define their region as expansively as it needs. For example, in 2005 when the federal levees broke after Hurricane Katrina ravaged LA and MS, my organization Market Umbrella struggled to find enough partners to rebuild our region – but not because we had not thought regionally previously, but because the region we HAD developed was entirely in the same situation. In other words, we had established a bioregion for our farmers markets (even going as far as defining our allowable vendor range as anywhere in the “American Alligator region” which spanned multiple states as the climate and agricultural products were shared with New Orleans) but in terms of truly creating organizational and community resilience, we would have benefited from deeper relationships north and west – and not just south and east – and in other sectors such as housing and transportation. (We also struggled because few other entities were able to work regionally which is part of what disaster exacerbates and why you have to have that approach before the bad day comes.) So I now know only so well that political, cultural, and even historic trade regions are as vital for food organizers to know for their own work. And while ensuring that racial justice is front and center in our work, simply ignoring those outside of our “blue” or “red” area will not serve our shared goals very well.
In terms of offering a global framework, the FAO report titled “Mapping of territorial markets; methodology and guidelines for participatory data collection” was recently recommended to me. The report essentially defines what the US calls “local” or “producer-only” markets (of course, neither of which are entirely precise) as territorial markets. From the report: The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) defined these ‘embedded markets’ as ‘territorial markets’ (CFS, 2016a), characterized by the following criteria: ◗ They are directly linked to local, national and/or regional food systems (the vast majority of products, producers, retailers and consumers are from the given territory). ◗ They are more characterized than other markets by horizontal (i.e. non-hierarchical) relations among the various stakeholders. ◗ They are inclusive and diverse in terms of stakeholders and products. ◗ They have multiple economic, social, cultural and ecological functions within their respective territory, and are thus not limited to food supply.
◗They are the most remunerative for smallholder farmers (as compared to other kinds of market), as they offer the farmers greater bargaining power over prices. ◗ They contribute to structuring the territorial economy, creating wealth and redistributing it within the territory. ◗ They can be formal, informal or a hybrid of the two. ◗ They can be located at different levels within territories (local, national and cross-border).
What is especially instructive to me about this description is the work we have in front of us in the U.S. to ensure our farmer markets measure up to this and to other categorizations and our policy partners understand it too.
All of this chat about networks leads to a recommendation for a model encapsulated in a new book due out in October:
Kuni: A Japanese Vision and Practice for Urban-Rural Reconnection
In the book, Tsuyoshi Sekihara and Richard McCarthy take turns with descriptions and illustrations of what reimagining of the rural-urban relationship might look like and what results it could offer. Sekihara is the founder of the Kamiechigo Yamazato Fan Club, a community development organization focused on the holistic revival of Japan’s rural areas, while Richard was the founder and the longtime director of the U.S. based regional farmers market organization, Market Umbrella that I mentioned above.
“Kuni” is both a reimagining of the Japanese word for nation and an approach to reviving communities. It shows what happens when dedicated people band together and invest their hearts, minds, and souls back into a community, modeling a new way of living that actually works. A kuni can be created anywhere–even a hamlet on the verge of extinction–and embodies 7 key principles:
Everyone is equal in a kuni
Kuni is equipped with a regional management organization–a democratic organization that takes care of small public services
Kuni is a link between residents and repeat visitors
Life in a kuni is circular–consumption and production are in balance
Kuni embraces the whole person
I’ll add a bit of Wendell Berry here with how he suggested communities should also think through the appropriate scale for human centered regionalism:
“We must not outdistance local knowledge and affection, or the capacities of local persons to pay attention to details, to the “minute particulars” only by which, William Blake thought, we can do good to one another.”
Much of what Kuni (and Berry) are lifting up, we are seeing in some extraordinary US farmers markets and food work, most often led by Black, persons of color, and indigenous leaders. No surprise to me that what white-led and designed organizations are trying to figure out in the current work to become active anti-racist allies, our sisters and brothers knew already.
Chiefly among that is to eschew linear, hierarchal, purely capitalistic roles and structures for those that value the entire human, have a democratic center, and prioritize balance and inclusion. Once a community embraces that, the sky is the limit in terms of impact and organizational health. That will be the reward for listening to leaders who came to this work with system change as their goal and to those who are leading us with care and intention: that the food community thrives by establishing regional connections, valuing human-centered innovation and the realization of our shared future.
I assume my readers have correctly surmised that I live in the hurricane zone of New Orleans and that as a result, am always interested in talking with operators about and looking for ways to prepare for the inevitable interruption. How markets help in the recovery and rebuilding of current disasters and what we develop as a resistance to future disasters is something for which we can all prepare ourselves. Disasters that U.S. markets have had to handle just this half decade include damage to persons, home and food production because of climate chaos, infrastructure collapse, civil unrest, mass shootings, police actions, pandemic shutdowns and I’m sure there are more types that I forgot to cover.
As a New Orleans resident and as a part-time US market consultant, I am always thinking about how I can help my own area and others too.
At FMC too we think a lot about it, since we provide support to markets (through grants and contracts) by:
a) facilitating technical assistance or networking with peers or building communities of practice to solve an issue;
b) the development or dissemination of resources;
c) offering analysis of the sector, of programs or directly to a market;
d) assisting or leading in the development of low or high tech suitable for market operational needs.
…- so check in with me if you have ideas about how FMC can do that around disaster recovery. Here is some of what we have gathered and created so far. And we are also excited to be a founding member of the World Farmers Markets Coalition where we expect to learn much to bring back to US markets on this subject and others.
On their own, most market organizations will not be able to organize themselves out of a disaster because the long effort over many phases requires prior informal and formal relationships with local and regional governments, and some resources that are held outside of the impact zone. So the goal should be to have updated regional databases of farmers, value-added producers, production areas, agricultural experts, justice allies (cuz disaster is quite often a time when privilege and racist policies are the structure used to offer support and to restore communities), templates, data about the market sector around the disaster area, and the right connections already made with government entities and activists in and around the food system.
One reason that those local and regional governments will search for your organization after a disaster will be because of those databases and the shared lessons from other market communities you have but for it to be helpful to those entities, your preparation will need to be more than just about your market community. So organizing now around civic and agricultural partnerships- even if done lightly for now – will allow a faster recovery by keeping you at the table and in the loop. And when farmers and others see your ability to respond to a moment, you could even grow your market once recovery is over.
Understanding Consumer Interest in Product and Process-Based Attributes for Fresh Produce (2008) Authors Bond/Thilmany/Bond
Abstract
“The choices consumers make about fresh produce, such as where it is purchased and what they are willing to pay, are likely influenced by a range of private and public attributes. This study uses factor and cluster analysis techniques to explore the preferences of consumers who responded to a 2006 national survey to determine the dimensions over which consumers make purchasing decisions and to identify key market segments. Analysis is based on a variety of survey questions relating to preferences for various fresh produce traits and process attributes, as well as willingness to pay for a subset of these attributes. We find that although there is only a small degree of correlation between tested variables, four consumer clusters can be identified as market segments: Urban, Assurance Seekers, Price Conscious Consumers, Quality and Safety Consumers, and Personal Value Buyers. Each cluster values both private and public attributes, though with differing intensities and focus.“
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This is the type of data that is so very helpful in refining messaging. Each of these clusters has a potential connection to farmers market shopping and by using their defined values, a market might just attract a new cluster of shoppers.
•Lower to middle income, lower educational attainment, more concentrated in urban areas in South Atlantic and Pacific regions of U.S.
•They rank the importance of local production higher than the other clusters but choose indirect sales (grocery rather than farmers market or stands) for that local production
•Perceived safety is highly valued
Potential Message 1: “Fewer hands touching your food”
Potential Message 2: “The farmers picked fresh this morning.”
As I mentioned in my previous post, I am on my way to Oregon to join the FSLN National Gathering Monday – Thursday this week. While there, I’ll be meeting up with inspiring leaders who can share ideas for how I can better serve the front-line direct marketing producers, market and CSA organizers, and my own FMC team.
On the first leg of this many-phased trip, I read two recent research papers, 1 on farmers markets and 1 on consumer interest in local food, and immediately found some very interesting information I can use in various projects. I’ll share some here in the hope it is also helpful to others.
The first was a research paper by John Metz and Sarah Scherer published in 2021 titled “The Rise and Decline of Farmers Markets in Cincinnati.” This is a great, well-researched paper for anyone wanting to understand the history of that region’s markets, and also for those interested in data on market closure factors in the area.
Methodology
They did site visits, interviewed managers, and recorded data on products sold, businesses location and gathered other information from informal conversations with vendors. They also consulted another unpublished local survey. (Twiss. Green Umbrella 2016)
Market organization
For this study, the researchers defined farmers markets as having 2 or more farmers selling their own goods (using the USDA’s loose definition) and added the stipulations that farmers at these markets must have ¼ acre or more in production for local sale. They also excluded sites that were the actual production site, defining those as farm stands. They defined Saturday markets as different markets than those that had weekday markets operating at the same site, resulting in 37 sites operating 42 different markets.
Numbers
The Greater Cincinnati market grew from 21 in 2004 to 41 in 2012 with a “25 increase in 2005 and a 35% jump between 2009-2010.” The number peaked in 2012 and then fell 17% (n34) by 2018.
From 2005-2018, 42 new markets opened but 25 closed in same period for a 60% reduction.
During the 2005-2018 era, 71% of the closed markets operated 3 or fewer years. In contrast, 1975-1989 era, 32% (n7) of the 22 closed in the first 3 years.
Vendor-Led and Community-Led
The authors classify markets by its decision-makers, with “Farmer-Focused” and “Consumer-Focused” (or, in the language of a report they cite by Gantla/Lev from 2015, Vendor-Led (VL) and Community-Led (CL)*. I prefer the Gantla/Lev language so I’ll use that here).
Metz and Scherer concluded that the founders’ vision for the market created and continued the market’s decision-making structure. That is in line with the Market Eras Research that I have shared and continue to refine.
Among the Vendor Led markets, 11 of 13 were begun by farmers or Extension. The authors define this type as existing to primarily provide farmers with venues to sell produce. The VL markets had fewer vendors than CL markets (a mean of 6.8 vs 19.4) and the only items that were not produce tended to be jams, jellies, relishes, and baked goods prepared by the farmer vendors. Market managers had fewer responsibilities since these markets tended to offer fewer activities and rarely to conduct data collection (sales, visitor counts, or shopper surveys.) None of the VL markets had a website during the period studied.
12 of the 13 were managed by volunteers, often running more than one. So of the 13 markets, there were only 7 managers. Most were over 60.
Among the Community-Led markets, only 2 of the 24 were started by farmers. These markets had slightly varying goals for their existence including providing healthy food to neighbors, helping farmers make a better living, but also included community development goals as well.
These markets had many types of prepared foods and usually had music, and other activities. Half of these markets also had crafts but allowing crafts is also definitely a subcategory among CL markets as the other half did not allow them at all.
Many of these markets did collect sales (7), shopper counts (12), and shoppers surveys (10) at some point in the time period studied although few did it consistently: only 3-5 of the 37 did consistent data collection in the period studied. And only 3 managers reported collecting daily sales data with another 4 estimating sales annually.
13 of 24 of the CL markets were managed by volunteers although 2 of these volunteers did receive a (small) stipend or the market waived the manager’s vendor fee. Of the 11 that received some sort of serious compensation, only 4 were full-time and had other responsibilities besides managing the market. The researchers analyzed that 6 of those 11 received between $17-$23 hour.
20 of the 24 managers were under 60.
All managers for both types identified as white and 31 of 37 as female.
This research’s conclusions as to why the Cincinnati markets closed:
Farmers markets exceeded current consumer demand
The unexamined assumptions and unconscious biases of market operators who were white reduced the markets appeal to Black, Indigenous/Native people, and communities of Color.
New technology in food retailing that encouraged payment options and online shopping was (is) still difficult in farmers markets
Shortage of farmers
Poor management of market
One thing they did NOT find as a cause for closures among this area’s markets was internal competition from other markets. Their analysis suggests that of the markets that they studied, few of those that closed were within the competition range of other markets. They also note that the number of “Tailgate Markets” closing from 1985-2004 was matched by the number of “Non-Tailgate” new markets opening.
Such a valuable report! I appreciate how it was organized and the core data it offers. They cite our Pittsburgh market report from 2019 which is not surprising as the analysis is presented in a similar fashion. Their conclusions also reflect many reports that rely on historic data from farmers market eras and the characteristics of market types – including the VT report from my colleague Jean Hamilton that they also cite.
Essentially: markets struggle if they are not organized collectively, if they do not fight for farmers to remain at their center, if they cannot keep a consistent, paid management team, and if they do not employ realistic methods to analyze the external and internal factors that impact their existence.
All of that shows the type of deep support we need funders to start to offer market organizations – which means beyond program $$. The program partnerships are extremely welcome but they come with the expectation of a lot of added work that is not always supported. We need funders and policymakers to understand the underlying mission and operations of each organization and form long term partnerships to maintain and expand those. To make that happen, market operators need to share these reports, collect their own and stop hiding the hard work they and their vendors do.
Footnote *Institution-Led is Gantla/Lev’s 3rd category and defined as markets run by larger orgs that do more than operate farmers markets.
hello strangers! I promise I am back to writing regularly for this blog, now that the mad schedule over the last few years which includes FMC GusNIP TA facilitation structure, responding to the early COVID needs among market operators, the work to help get the World Farmers Market Coalition rolling, and also FMC’s new grants/project work underway and (excellent) staff almost all hired and onboarded.
So if you remember, I am on the road most of the summer, partly because of the hurricane trauma we live under here in New Orleans, and because since FMC is a remote workplace and I can go see and talk to market operators and farmers.
That travel really begins next week with a trip to Oregon for the Food System Leadership Network Vision and Strategy Event. I am excited to be attending this event, as I have long been associated with the Wallace Center both in my consulting for markets and in the support that Wallace Center offered FMC way back in 2006-2008. (The Resource Library and the FAQs on the FMC site were partially built by Wallace Center staff and contractors and were offered to FMC to help get the farmers market-specific website up).
If you will be at the retreat and are a farmers market operator or advocate and want to talk in person, please message me on the Whova app.
And if you are in OH, Chicago, VT, Pittsburgh, or DC and are a farmers market operator or advocate and want to talk in person message me at darwolnik at gmail.
Please add your market or organization name in the subject so I can fish it out of spam!
If I add more locations to my travel, I’ll let you know.
At the end of this second year of the COVID era, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the thousands of market leaders, tens of thousands of producers, and the hundreds of thousands of our neighbors who have continued to prioritize regional food in their lives even during this horrific pandemic.
I think we had hoped that we had passed the biggest test of the COVID crisis, but it is possible that we may have a bigger one: to find the fortitude to safely withstand the succession of its outbreaks over the next few months and possibly even years while still attempting to grow the number and diversity of those able to purchase healthy food for their families. And to do that even as other shocks (climate chaos, the pitched battle over white supremacy, crumbling infrastructure) hit our communities at the same time.
People often call this being resilient.
Resilience is the ability to adapt to difficult situations. That seems straightforward, but many communities have pointed out that very adaptation can become the only action or the status quo, allowing government to rely on that resiliency rather than attempting to solve the underlying issues. Depending on the crisis or series of crises, it can be depleted and once gone, can mean catastrophe for a community by allowing outside actors to become the only arbiters of what happens during recovery.
-from the site Edge Effects:
Resiliency-based planning, however, has been opposed by grassroots organizations and activists. In 2015 in response to the City of New Orleans’s resilience strategy, posters started appearing throughout New Orleans quoting Tracie Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute. “Stop calling me resilient,” the posters read, “Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’ that means you can do something else to me. I am not resilient.” As (it) makes clear, instead of simply addressing the cause of environmental degradation such as land loss, Louisiana has apparently accepted the inevitability of this degradation–and is learning how to cope.
We should acknowledge and credit resiliency but insist on creating more participatory and dynamic solutions, focusing funding and efforts to those that are contextual to that place and its scope.
In terms of being contextual to that place, writer Jane Jacobs suggested that one of municipalities’ main activities be (I’m paraphrasing her here) actively replacing imported goods and ideas with regional goods and home-grown creativity whenever possible. To do what Jacobs suggested requires participatory structures and illustrative pilots for government to draw from. That ability to test multiple solutions at the community level would be one strategy that food system leaders can use in outlining as to why our work is so important to municipalities’ plans.
And whenever we talk about scale in food systems, the discussion often settles into a set of camps including (a) those who think the goal is to scale up food production to meet industrial food’s demands and (b) those who firmly believe that food is itself an antidote to scaling up, and (c/d) those who want to keep industrial food functioning and participating in local food production even as they work on alternatives and so on. The development of multiple systems may be best explained in the 2 Loops Theory of the Berkana Institute which I have written about previously that describes those roles to be played.
Also, whenever scale comes up, I think of this from Wendell Berry:
It is a formidable paradox that in order to achieve the sort of limitlessness we have begun to call sustainability, whether in human life or the other life of the ecosphere, strict limits must be observed. Enduring structures of household and family life, or the life of the community or the life of the country, cannot be formed except within limits. We must not outdistance local knowledge and affection, or the capacities of local persons to pay attention to details, to the “minute particulars” only by which, William Blake thought, we can do good to one another.
Within limits, we can think of rightness of scale. When the scale is right, we can imagine completeness of form.”
In other words, scale itself needn’t be the enemy; rightness of scale allows us to still pay attention to details, to measure how we do good to one another.
How do we find that rightness of scale?
Writer Ihnji Jon outlined a scale of political action that can serve either ever-expanding (globalized) or ever-narrowing (localized) as long as they are:
1) “subject to territorial conditions”,
2)”posses a degree of intensity that allows it to be influential across different systems”,
3) “are large enough to retain complexity that allows them to have interaction effects”
So as we think about farmers markets and community food systems, the right scale would keep the food system leaders able to pressure government to deal with the underlying issues, would encourage funding for localized active, inclusive democratic networks, would support communities to rebuild as slowly or quickly as they need and use local leadership in doing so, and most importantly would democratize all of the resources needed to create the new adapted normal. That would mean resiliency would be properly supported by functioning systems and would measure its spread as an opportunity to make real changes in that place, rather than celebrating it as a solution.
That could mean radically changing the emergency food system to reduce the bureaucracy of getting support when needed and increasing actual mutual aid, it could mean working to become the true center of inclusive civic spaces, it could mean engaging with the educational system to link regional food to childhood health, it could mean that regional climate initiatives become focused on food production and in championing the stewardship of local people…
All of that is possible, even if it is not yet probable. I hope to begin to outline examples of systemic thinking and scaled planning among farmers markets and their regional food system efforts on this site in 2022. Please share those you know about in the comments.
and lastly, I hope each of you takes some time the rest of this year to replenish your own reserves. Please do consider how you can engage with your community in ways that reduce the need for the reservoir of your resiliency to be emptied in each crisis and that increase your joy in the lovely way each of you does good to others in farmers market spaces.
yeah I know- i’m the one who has been absent from my own blog! I have a LOT to share with my market community and will be posting regularly this summer here.
For now, I’ll share news of the TentTalk that I did with the FM Pros team; truly truly, I was honored to be asked, of course am horrified by the sound of my voice and my run-on sentences- but gotta admit- it sounds like me.
and my extended interview (where Catt and I discussed market music licensing issues!) will run in their members monthly email the first Monday of June.
Helping Public Markets Grow 