Hollygrove Market’s debt forces closure of post-Katrina bright spot

I’ve been waiting for this for some time. The design of this program has depended on grants and at times, on the kindness of the neighborhood leadership, and as is the case far too often, on goodwill to carry them through. The costs (some of which are outlined in Paul Barricos’ thoughtful and honest interview in ensuing articles which indicate that the cost of rent and insurance were significant for a non-profit and doesn’t even mention the cost for utilities, which you can imagine…)
More importantly, the original idea was undercut almost immediately by for-profit versions of delivery services and by offering products with too little profit margin to make it. I also commend Paul and his Hollygrove CDC team who have done their best to learn about farming and retail as best they could and stepped up to provide an outlet for local farmers, much like Sankofa has been doing in the lower 9 section of New Orleans for about the same length of time.As local farmers Grant and Kate Estrade of Local Cooling Farm said today, think of the farmers who sell through this outlet and do your best to not penalize them because of this closure.

For me, the lesson is that community initiatives around food and farming in an urban environment are very very challenging, especially when supply and demand needs are not balanced and the retail food sector decides there is enough business to co-opt the idea behind these community efforts. As this may become public again(!), I will also share that when this leadership opened Hollygrove “farm” in 2008 ish, I sent a strongly worded message to them that I felt the mission and message were muddy and the farmers and harvesters would end up losing through their plan to become an aggregator and distributor without understanding the costs or scope of such an endeavor. Sadly, that is exactly the case.