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Vegetable thieves get truckloads from big Ag

sign of the times? or a sign of the wrong scale?

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HOW TO: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign

Great information as to measuring your “Return on Investment” for all of that time the market spends on social media. With these calculations alongside your one time a year SEED survey, you would have some incredible data!

HOW TO: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign.

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A wild underground market

The forageSF folks are receiving some coverage about their underground market in the New York Times and in other publications. Their mission is about reconnecting the urban SF dweller to their wild foods and the market seems to have grown out of the need to have a place to encourage more knowledge, more new items AND because they could not get in to markets because of the rules about “grow it to sell it”. I wonder, how many markets around the country would have flatly said no to these foragers?
As some of you know, I am fascinated by the relationship between CSAs and public markets, and have noticed that many CSAs end up operating as a type of market, and I am always curious if the opposite is true too. This one seems to be moving more in the direction of the market being more useful for their work as it evolves.

What’s interesting about this is the idea is they seem to rate new vendors highest (based on the quotes in the story.) So, the usual criteria of favoring return vendors is much less useful to them, which tells me they have a very good sense of their 4Ms (mission, management, marketing and measurement).
On top of that, they have a free membership that you need to sign up for to get into the market, as you need to check off their hold harmless as a shopper so it really seems like the are dotting their is and crossing their ts…

So I wonder if this is a new typology of market (in marketumbrella.org’s spectrum of market analysis we are collecting with the Market Portraits).

They are definitely an organization to watch.

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Just a Dose Will Do — Emerging Ideas — Utne Reader

A bottle cap of fertilizer rather than spraying the entire field. Huh. Why does it take so long for us to see the small solutions?

Just a Dose Will Do — Emerging Ideas — Utne Reader.

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Localism Index from The New Rules Project

This amazing list is from The New Rules Project which is:
A program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the New Rules Project started back in 1998 and continues to bring fresh new policy solutions to communities and states to ensure that they are “designing rules as if community matters”.

Localism Index

A version of this appeared in the April 25, 2011 issue of The Nation.

Number of new independent bookstores that have opened since 2005: 437

Increase since 2002 in the number of small specialty food stores: 1,414

Increase since 2002 in the number of small farms: 111,839

Number of farmers markets active in 2010: 6,132

Percentage of active farmers markets started since 2000: 53

Average percentage of shoppers at a large supermarket who have a conversation with another customer: 9

Average percentage of shoppers at a farmers market who have a conversation with another customer: 63

The complete Localism Index

There are some good numbers in there for our work, but I say we need more!
I can tell you the impact that the 3 Crescent City Farmers Markets (the markets that are run by my organization marketumbrella.org) has on our city of New Orleans and its region by using numbers from our 2010 SEED report. This was done with our web-based tool called SEED which stands for Sticky Economic Evaluation Device and uses the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis multiplier for our region.
The multiplier is a term for tracking how money is spent and re-spent in a regional economy in any one sector. Obviously, when local businesses make money (like our market vendors), they re-spend that locally. How long it stays here before “leaking out” depends on what businesses they have available to them, whether its only Walmart (where the money is sent to their home base of Arkansas more quickly) or Joe’s Nursery, which spends that money locally again.

2010 SEED
Market impact: $6,717,630.32 Sales in the market, and the amount of money generated by those vendors spending it again. The BEA multiplier we used was for our region was 1.9% and was for the retail sector.

The impact the market has on its surrounding areas: $3,217,727.94 Again, this is shoppers telling us if they were going to spend money in the businesses around the market while there. That number multiplied by the regional BEA number.

Sales tax from sales at nearby businesses to the market: $151,620.69 Those who grow their own food and then sell it directly in Louisiana do not collect sales tax. However, the market does add sales tax to the city and state’s coffers because of the sales at nearby businesses that happen when our shoppers go there.

Overall economic impact $9,935,358

From three 4-hour markets each week.

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Shopping more often may increase longevity

This story could be useful to cite when writing grants to public health organizations for your market:

Shopping regularly can help people live longer.

That’s the suggestion from a study that found older people in Taiwan who shopped frequently tended to outlive those who went less often – even when other factors were taken into account.

Those who shopped every day were 27 per cent less likely to die within the 10-year study period compared with those who never shopped, or who went shopping less than once a week.

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Mass adds support for farmers markets

BOSTON – April 6, 2011 – With farmers’ markets preparing to open for the season, the Patrick-Murray Administration today announced that it will be providing $50,000 in grants for equipment and support to help farmers’ markets process Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits used by low-income residents.

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A perspective on food danger from radiation

The phrase that runs through my mind over and over is “too early to tell.”
(Don’t I know that living and eating from the Gulf of Mexico…)
In any case, here is a thoughtful piece on possible issues from Japan’s third tragedy in 2011:

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Jacksonville Farmers Market reaches out to low-income communities

News story with new Florida Ag Commissioner talking about markets, machines and incentives.

Posted: April 4, 2011 – 11:40pm


By David Bauerlein

On Monday, state Agriculture and Consumer Protection Services Commissioner Adam Putnam visited Glennette Produce and other vendors who have embraced the card-swipe machines. Putnam said the machines enable people in low-income neighborhoods, where grocery stores are scarce, to use the farmers market for the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables.

That in turn helps Florida farmers by giving them a bigger market for their products, he said.

Putnam didn’t make any announcements during his visit. He said he mainly wanted to learn more about how the Jacksonville Farmers Market operates.

“They’re really got a lot to teach us as we ramp this up on a statewide basis,” he said. “It’s part of a larger effort of nurturing our small farmers.”

He said the state helped a farmers market in Miami form a partnership with a private foundation that has a goal of improving the health of low-income people by giving them access to fresh produce. In that partnership, the private foundation will match on a dollar-for-dollar basis whatever a Florida resident spends at the farmer’s market using the state’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

For instance, a resident who spends $10 using a SNAP card would be able to purchase an additional $10 of fresh produce because of the private foundation’s support.

Putnam said he wants to help establish similar partnerships with other farmers markets in the state, including Jacksonville.
Entire story at:

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Study on health for community or allotment gardeners

From the Netherlands:

Background

The potential contribution of allotment gardens to a healthy and active life-style is increasingly recognized, especially for elderly populations. However, few studies have empirically examined beneficial effects of allotment gardening. In the present study the health, well-being and physical activity of older and younger allotment gardeners was compared to that of controls without an allotment.

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600,000 for incentives

BRIDGEPORT, Conn., March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Wholesome Wave, a Connecticut-based, national nonprofit organization dedicated to nourishing neighborhoods across America by increasing access to and affordability of healthy, fresh locally grown food, announced today that it has received a $600,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente. The funding will be used primarily to support its Double Value Coupon Program (DVCP), which provides fresh food incentives to encourage low-income consumers to increase their purchase of nutritious produce through local farmers markets.

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Institutional Food with Taste — Mindful Living — Utne Reader

Story about the institutional world coming closer to our alternative one.

Institutional Food with Taste — Mindful Living — Utne Reader.

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NYC: grocers vs. green carts?

Important story on Green Cart expansion in NYC and how some storefronts are reacting:

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Another study on happiness

Way back in 2006 when the Ford Foundation asked how we were planning on measuring social capital in markets, we answered “happiness.” That’s right, we thought about measuring happiness, and the many ways that people felt when they came to buy, sell or just sit at a market.
Unfortunately, they thought maybe we should find another proxy and so we did (trust). But we never forgot our first love and often longingly think of what could have been.
Just read ANOTHER study on it and now this from Bhutan:
In an interview with Yes! Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigmi Y. Thinley attempts to explain how his country is pursuing the goal of happiness for all:

First, we are promoting sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development which can be measured to a larger extent through conventional metrics.
Second is the conservation of a fragile ecology, [using] indicators of achievement, [such] as the way the green [vegetation] cover in my country has expanded over the last 25 years from below 60 to over 72 percent….
The third strategy is promotion of culture, which includes preservation of the various aspects of our culture that continue to be relevant and supportive of Bhutan’s purpose as a human civilization….
Then there is the fourth strategy—good governance [in the form of democracy]—on which the other three strategies or indicators depend.
And then there are the critics who say the very pursuit of happiness is shallow and contributes to much of the suffering in the world. Guest references books like Bright Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich and Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges, summing up their ideas—maybe over simplistically—as, “Do you think gaping economic inequalities, unjust wars, and ferocious un/underemployment are problems? Don’t worry, be happy.”
So, are there ways to pursue happiness, both as an individual and as a nation? Guest says it may “come back to a formulation that Freud famously (and perhaps apocryphally) proposed a century ago: love and work.” That is, healthy relationships and meaningful work seem to be important factors in measuring happiness

Read more: http://www.utne.com/Spirituality/Bhutan-Gross-National-Happiness-Being-Happy.aspx#ixzz1Cce6jRV9happiness index

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