farmers markets

“Juice wasn’t worth the squeeze”

So the story of the flameout of Dinner Lab is something to ponder. As a New Orleanian who watched it up close, I was mystified by what they were trying to sell; turns out, they were too. Even with 10 million bucks in venture capital available.
This type of badly managed tech “solution” often seems the food system equivalent of living in Tornado Alley: A high probability of sudden and uncoordinated disruptions with widespread destruction left behind. Of course, there are many excellent tech innovations that have also helped organizers too; just make sure that you investigate the goals, backers and the operation before encouraging farmers or markets to join up.

At each meal, Dinner Lab had guests provide detailed feedback on that night’s menu. The company thought it could make money off that data, but they learned there was no market for the information.

Since closing, Dinner Lab has ignored numerous messages from NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune about whether paid members would receive a refund.

Likely they will wait as long as the GoodEggs vendors waited for recompense for the orders they had prepared for delivery when that business closed without warning in mid week last August: forever.

Source: Dinner Lab autopsy: ‘Juice wasn’t worth the squeeze,’ CEO tells Forbes | NOLA.com

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Chip cards can lead to higher debit fees for merchants

For example, when customers insert a chip-based debit card into a new terminal, they may be offered only Visa’s network as the choice. Or they may see two options: “Visa debit” or “U.S. debit.” Since most consumers don’t know what “U.S. debit” is — it’s actually is a link to smaller networks like NYCE — they usually pick Visa.

Instead of being prompted to enter their PINs, shoppers are asked for a signature, and the merchant is charged from 1 percent to 2 percent per transaction when a card is issued by a smaller bank. About a third of all debit cards come from financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets, whose fees aren’t capped under an amendment to the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act.

By contrast, most PIN-based debit-card transactions, such as those over the NYCE network, have average fees of about 25 cents — and slightly more for cards issued by smaller banks. Visa and MasterCard have PIN-based debit networks too, but many of the new terminals are set up to favor their more expensive signature systems.

 

The main issue is that under the amendment sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, an ally of the retail industry, merchants must be given at least two options for routing transactions. However, many processing companies and vendors haven’t upgraded their clients’ terminals with software designed to steer transactions to the least-expensive debit network. In many cases, the choice is preset, or it’s shoppers who are making the decision when they are prompted to choose a network.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/chip-cards-slap-u-s-merchants-with-unexpected-higher-debit-fees

 

Recent post on mobile wallet technology

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Social media data (from T•Mobile)

 

It might be helpful to increase the size of your screen to read this. For my Mac, I can hold down the control key and hit the + key to easily increase the  text size. Cuz I’m old.

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Why Apple Pay and Other Mobile Wallets Beat Chip Cards – NYT

I’ve wondered if some market networks might begin to accept mobile wallet payments.

Also, the title may be slightly misleading. The article goes on to say:

Stephanie Ericksen, a Visa executive who works on security solutions for new payment technologies, says the sluggishness of the chip is largely a perception issue. The actual transaction time behind a mobile payment and a chip card is the same.

But with the chip, most merchant terminals require you to leave the card inside the reader until the transaction is complete and wait for a screen to tell you that you can remove the card. With the mobile payments, you can just tap the phone, and there is no extra screen telling you to remove the phone, which partly explains why the transaction appears to move along more quickly.

Visa is addressing the perception of sluggish transactions with Quick Chip. It is basically a coming software upgrade that will allow the terminals to instruct the customer to dip the card and remove it right away.

Link to NYT story

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Couple Spends Morning At Farmers Market Verbalizing Everything That Comes Into Field Of Vision

For those deep in grant writing purgatory, this short pice from the Onion should give you a good-natured and needed laugh. Thanks to Stacy Miller, owner of good phyte foods at the Charlottesville Farmers Market for alerting us to it.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—Strolling past vendors selling local produce, meats, baked goods, and more, married couple Reese and Beth Shaw spent their morning at the farmers market stating the names of all the things that entered their field of vision, witnesses confirmed Sunday. “Strawberry jam, spinach, some nice-looking asparagus,” said the pair, whose successful enunciation of the names of objects reportedly went on to include cilantro, Vidalia onions, eggs, three types of danishes, twine-wrapped lavender soaps, various dairy products, flowers, a large wooden bushel basket, fresh roasted coffee, and several artisanal varieties of balsamic vinegar. “Oooh, clover honey. More honey. Look—mushrooms!” The couple was later seen walking away from the farmers market, recalling aloud to one another all the various things that had passed through their field of vision just moments earlier.

http://www.theonion.com/

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How Columbus Is Using Smart Cities Challenge and Transit to Reduce High Infant Mortality Rate 

A very important story that illustrates how the social determinants can undermine any desire by individuals to access healthy living strategies. As many enterprising organizers have learned, simply adding a farmers market deep within  a food desert does not solve all of the nutritional problems faced by those residents. Additionally, the fact that markets do well when sitting on the “edge” of two or more communities (even with one being a food desert) and can therefore encourage bridging among the many residents has not been tested enough by planners or food system leaders.
As someone who was a community organizer in Columbus many years ago, I lived and worked in some of the very underserved areas described in this article and saw the effect on my neighbors and even on myself in those years. No doubt in my mind that the “mobile” in the term mobile markets in some cases should be focused on adding public transportation and shuttles from agencies to functioning markets that can offer a wide group of amenities to those new shoppers.

Finally, anyone who has heard my presentation on the “eras” of farmers markets which concludes with me asking those attending what the next era will be focused on will understand how gratified I am to see planners and regional governments include farmers markets in their strategies. Maybe this is the start of a beautiful friendship…

Crucially, Columbus wants to offer universal transit cards, which riders could use to pay for public transit as well as taxis, ride-hailing and car-sharing options. Kiosks would be installed at key locations, which would allow riders with (or without) credit cards or smartphones to add funds, call rides, and access real-time transit information. The city may also subsidize trips by private service providers like Uber and Car2Go. (A report released this week by the Center for American Progress highlighted this approach as a boon for low-income riders.) This could go a long way to address gaps in first mile/last mile connections, which can be a huge hurdle to low-income citizens getting the services they need.

The city is hoping a new BRT line and smarter technology can help families access crucial services.

Source: How Columbus Is Using Smart Cities Challenge and Transit to Reduce High Infant Mortality Rate – CityLab

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The Link Between Food Insecurity and the Great Recession 

A report from the Hamilton Project highlights the lingering effects of the Great Recession on food insecurity…

There’s considerable state-by-state variation in food insecurity levels across the country, demonstrating once again that geography matters if you’re poor.

Here’s what Vilsack had to say about some states’ approach to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and whether SNAP should be eliminated in favor of a block grant (as House Speaker Paul Ryan has proposed):

I’m leery about block grants, just simply because I haven’t seen governors step up.
I alluded earlier, when we came in in 2009, there were states where a little over 50 percent of eligible people were actually receiving SNAP because that particular governor, that particular administration, did not care enough to make sure that people knew about these benefits, did not care enough to make sure that their bureaucracy was getting information out in languages that people could understand, did not care enough to simplify the process, so I’m skeptical.

The Obama administration has successfully increased overall SNAP participation levels to 85 percent, but Vilsack’s comments illustrate how seemingly minor local political decisions around SNAP education and outreach can affect enrollment in a program that effectively reduces food insecurity.

The Link Between Food Insecurity and the Great Recession — Pacific Standard

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Sustainable Cities and Social Capital

Any reader of this blog has seen a bit about social capital and markets. Many of the issues that we struggle with in the U.S. have to do with the lack of a shared social fabric and healthy living opportunities for all;  markets (and their surrounding food and civic systems) can alleviate some of those. As for their placement, when social capital is properly understood, the host cities would support markets getting long-term space in Main Street corridors or in historic downtowns. Finally, when markets struggle with adding benefit programs or attracting users of their other educational programming, it can be often traced back to the type or quantity of social capital present in their market. This study linked below has descriptions of how this works.

It was clear from presenters and participants alike that it is very difficult to make progress on aspirations and change when the social fabric is thin or doesn’t exist. When we don’t have sufficient trust or relational connection as individuals or organizations (among and across our differences), we become preoccupied with identifying who (other than us) is responsible for our various messes. If you are a municipality, it’s the province or the federal government. If you’re a business owner, it’s all of government. If you’re a citizen, it’s business and government, and so on. We do need greater clarity on responsibility and with it, more effective ways of identifying if we have the resources to deliver what we’ve been asked to shoulder. Without that, frustration will increase as the dreams of the future get bigger.

Source: Sustainable Cities and Social Capital: Common Dilemmas and Hopes | Cardus Blog

 

This story in NYT today about how the Parisian government is attempting to fix the place where Les Halles once was illustrates this as well.

In a morbid spasm of 1970s urban renewal, the soaring 19th-century, Liberty-style, glass-and-steel food market — once the pulsating heart of the city — gave way to a claustrophobic underground shopping mall and flimsy street-level pavilions….

…Three weeks after the anxious official unveiling — “we had to fix this broken place,” Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris said — and five years after construction began, the appraisal of skeptical Parisians, it seems, is like the face the city presents to the world: reserved and critical, but not unwelcoming.

 

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SaveTheFood.com

Check out the new NRDC food waste campaign with lots of “assets” for organizers to  share on different platform. It’ll be seen via The Ad Councils strategy (which means millions of views at least), uses music from Disney’s UP movie and is a  charming and engaging take on this issue:
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Sign up for Food Tank’s live stream Summit

I’m a big fan of Food Tank and thought last year’s summit was thought-provoking and lively. I kept the live stream on all day while I worked to be able to stop and take notes when necessary.

Program found here

 

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USDA: Local Food Marketing Practices Survey

Data is crucial for any well functioning market. Producers, investors and consumers need to understand market trends and dynamics in order to make sound business decisions. This is as true for farmers and ranchers as it is for Wall Street executives. However, despite being an over $12 billion a year industry, the local and regional food sector has been hampered by a lack of useful data and metrics.

The near total absence of data on local and regional food economies has likely limited, or at least slowed the sectors’ potential growth. In fact, farmers and entrepreneurs routinely encounter challenges when applying for loans and accessing credit or risk management tools because they are unable to provide the necessary data about their sector’s markets and prices and the growth of their types of businesses.

New Survey

Fortunately, things are finally poised to change. The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is launching a first-of-its-kind Local Food Marketing Practices Survey that will collect benchmark data on the production, marketing and sales of local food and farm products. In order to provide farmers with the data they need to launch and grow successful businesses, however, NASS first needs farmer input.

NASS has mailed the survey to a random sample of 44,300 producers across the country who are engaged in local production and marketing. The survey will ask producers questions on the value of local food sales conducted through specific marketing channels, such as farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA), institutions (schools, hospitals or restaurants) and food hubs. Additional questions on the value of crop and livestock sales, farm expenses, and federal farm program participation will provide key benchmark figures to inform federal funding for local food programs. Data collected from the sample will be used to generate benchmark figures for the entire population of farmers engaged in local and regional food systems.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) strongly encourages all farmers who receive the survey to fill it out. Survey recipients have until May 2, 2016 to return the completed form by mail, or to complete the survey online.

After May 2, NASS may follow up directly with survey recipients in order to ensure thorough data collection. All responses to the survey will be kept confidential.

Results from the survey will be released in December 2016.

We also encourage sustainable food and farming organizations to share this story and opportunity with their farmer members and help get the word out. NSAC has long supported the creation of tools that would provide much-needed economic data to local farmers and producers, and we know that data is best when it is informed by as many farmer voices as possible.

The Local Food Survey, created as part of the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative, will provide valuable information and insight into the impact that USDA programs have had in bolstering the burgeoning local and regional food sector. The survey will also provide much-needed data to state and local agencies that promote local food markets, as well as non-governmental farmer/agricultural organizations that are working to build marketing strategies around the growing interest in local food production.

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Amid Climate-Fueled Food Crisis, Filipino Forces Open Fire on Starving Farmers 

Police and army forces shot at about 6,000 starving farmers and Lumad Indigenous people demonstrating for drought relief in the Philippines on Friday, ultimately killing 10.

 

On Monday, local farmer Noralyn Laus gave Democracy Now! a firsthand account of the disaster:

“Why we came down here is not to make trouble. We just want to demand for rice, because of the situation of El Niño is leaving our tribes hungry. What happened yesterday, we didn’t start it. They started it by beating us. We wouldn’t be angry if we weren’t beaten up or attacked. We’re having a crisis. We don’t have anything to eat or harvest. Our plants wilted. Even our water has dried up.”

“Our farmers—the country’s food producers—are battered the hardest and are left in poverty and hunger,” Rapollo said. “Civil disobedience will continue to escalate until the government stops playing deaf and blind to the genuine cry of the people.”

Source: Amid Climate-Fueled Food Crisis, Filipino Forces Open Fire on Starving Farmers | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

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POP your market in 2016

Last year, the Farmers Market Coalition teamed up with Chipotle Mexican Grill to give 30 farmers markets across the country the opportunity to meet their educational missions through the POP Club: Power of Produce! FMC is excited to announce that POP will continue at those markets for an additional year, AND will expand the program to include 20 MORE FMC member markets for the 2016 season!

POP Club began in 2011 at the Oregon City Farmers Market. The program’s success attracted the attention of, and quickly spread to, markets across the country. POP Club empowers children to make healthy food choices by engaging them in educational activities at the farmers market and putting buying power directly into their hands. The program gives children $5 in market currency (vouchers) to spend on fresh produce when they participate in a POP Club activity. POP Club provides a fun opportunity for children to participate in the local food system through conversations directly with farmers, educational games and demonstrations, and exposure to new fruits and vegetables. You can learn more about the POP Club here.

The Chipotle Mexican Grill sponsorship will provide 50 FMC members with activity supplies and promotional materials needed to run the program, and $2,000 in farmers market vouchers for POP Club participants! While the Chipotle sponsorship opportunity is open to a limited number of markets, the POP Club tools, guides, templates and promotional materials are available for download by all FMC members.
Sponsored markets will receive:

  • $2,000 in farmers market vouchers
  • A POP Club Banner
  • Grow Pots (flower pots with seeds and info on growing your own veggies)
  • Activity Books (Games and activities that also teach kids about growing food and eating healthy)
  • Farmers Market Scavenger Hunt cards
  • Salsa recipe cards
  • Temporary Tattoos
  • Templates for social media graphics, fliers, and POP Club Passports

The sponsored markets will be required to offer POP Club programming on 4 market days, between June and August.  However, markets are free to offer POP Club more often if desired.  Sponsored markets will be required to submit two brief progress reports on their POP Club activities. The POP Club events and final report must be completed by August 15th.

Does this sound like a great program for your market? Apply today! The online application takes about 15 minutes, and is due by Friday April 29th at 11:59 EST.  If you have any questions about the program, please contact Liz Comiskey atliz@farmersmarketcoalition.org.

Apply Today!
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