farmers markets

Drilling down into what solutions are right for you

One of my “side” jobs (meaning outside of being FMC’s Senior Research Associate some hours per week) is working as an independent consultant with individual markets and with networks or state associations on their projects. Often, this comes through FMPP funding or through another grant meant to increase capacity for that market.

This past weekend I went and worked with one of those projects. The board of the market took 3 hours from their off-season Saturday to discuss the strategies they have for increasing their capacity. This funded project (I’ll let them decide if they want to name themselves in this post) has 3 parts: to create a paid position for a market manager and to increase vendor and customer participation.

So to assist them with that thinking, one of the tasks was to lead them in an exercise that they will continue in the next few weeks on their own to decide what and why and how they want to do.

The exercise called Abstract Laddering is one of the human-centered design exercises that I saw and tested at a training in Pittsburgh a few years back, thanks to Knight Foundation funding given to FMC. The training was designed and led by the folks at Luma Institute and if you can convince a funder to pay for your way, I promise it is worth it. The course is offered in different cities and is an engaging and practical course.  Additionally, they offer their materials for purchase which are easy to use, even for a novice. This is similar to the Ideo firm whose work I have followed for some time and also offers their materials which I have read and employed on my own. They actually offer their courses online for much less than Luma but not having taken them, I cannot vouch for the training.

Human-centered design is an excellent way for markets to strategize and to include more people in the decision making. At Luma, the tools they work with are in 3 stages: “Looking, Understanding and Making” and each of those stages has a set of exercises to choose from which allows for dozens of different combinations. The main point to make about this type of design is that it is meant to be iterative, which in design means to allow constant input to alter the course of design and even to go back to square one if the design is not working for people who will use the solution.

The Abstract Laddering exercise is mean to help “reconsider a problem statement by broadening and/or narrowing its focus.”

Markets write lofty goals that are often quite broad into their grants.  This weekend, we focused on one of those: “to expand product variety and amount” which is a typical market goal. However, there are many things to consider in this goal, including what products, and how to encourage this.

The exercise has you write the problem to the right in the middle of a sheet of paper and draw a ladder on the left extending up and down. The up is Why and the down is How.

It is easy to see that this allows for a communication message to emerge in the How but it also encourages a team to expand their question if necessary. What if the expansion of the product goal requires the market to work on policy changes in their city or state? Or if to encourage their vendors to increase their products means resource development for product development is necessary?

The other way allows a team to narrow the focus of the problem  through open discussion. What kind of products? Immediately a board member asked if everyone thought this meant fruits and vegetables only or should they consider valued added or even producer crafts. That question is exactly why this exercise can be helpful.

Using post it notes, they each wrote and placed their ideas for how and why and once done, had a good start to that goal. I promised to transcribe their sheet and then they may create steps and assignments (WHO does this is also to be considered) for How, and for Why to see the many ways one could see this problem.

This entire exercise took less than 30 minutes and offered the board a simple path to designing a solution to their stated problem. They will continue this for the other stated goals and out of that, find a set of steps for each goal that will work within their current capacity.

And if it turns out that their solutions are not to the scale and pace of their market, why then we have other exercises to do that will help them get there.  After all, my goal is to assist them in creating a system that allows for clear and transparent decision making; human-centered design principles certainly help me in that work.

 

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A summit for us: Atlanta 2016

A whirlwind of a week in Atlanta with Wholesome Wave and its “surfers”: markets, market advocates and food system organizers. Held at the Emory Conference Center in Atlanta GA, just down the road a block or two from the CDC offices. WW did a great job with the week: well-organized, great food and drink (thumbs up for the smoothies available each day) and plenty of space for networking and meetings. Atlanta was lovely and the rare off-site food and drink I had was excellent, but I gotta say that the traffic is as unholy of a mess as I have experienced in any US city. Talk about needing a quality of life intervention!

Highlights for the Summit for me included:

The WW Georgia market shopper who turned to good food to beat her cancer; she was charming in telling a very personal story on a panel and brave to share her still-emotional reaction to using SNAP, even while sharing her appreciation for the program.

Organizing for State Nutrition Incentive Policies : all of the presenters had unique input on their state’s strategy: Ecology Center (CA), Experimental Station (IL), Maryland Farmers Market Association and New Mexico Farming Market Association. This group: Martin, Connie, Amy and Denise have a lot to contribute to any discussion of how to move the dial at the state level.  Check out their varied work on their respective websites and if you have a chance to buttonhole any of them at a conference, tell them I told you to do it. And the short answer is to have a creative and flexible strategy that includes how to pay for it and a constant champion in your statehouse.

Clinic-Community Initiatives-Pathways to Sustainability: what I got out of this session was one of those unintended consequences: the analysis that MANNA has done of their program as a handout was one that responded to a question that our new FMC Research and Education Director Alex Canepa had just been asking earlier that day: can we get data that actually indicates positive health changes from medical nutrition therapy  strategies that offset traditional medical costs? See the Examining Health Care Costs Among MANNA Clients and a Comparison Group report…

The Role of Technology in Supporting Nutrition Incentives: For those of us gamely working on technology solutions for markets that support the range of no-tech, low-tech to high-tech markets out there, this was an in-depth and honest conversation. I sincerely appreciated Darcy Freedman from Case Western Reserve University talking about how the tool is half of the puzzle; the TA is the other half.

Measuring the Impact of Vouchers at Farmers Markets: I think the title threw some people off this one as well as the description. This covered the evaluation being done by University of Delaware/CRESP and led by Allison Karpyn on the incentives and vouchers funded by WW. Her powerpoint is available to those who request it (check with them or with WW) and I’d recommend that you get a copy. Allison shared some of the early data and was game to listen to input from the attendees about what they thought about it so far.

Measuring Markets Economic, Ecological, Human and Social Capital: Of course I chose this one. FMC Project Director Sara Padilla led the show, but Jen Cheek also popped up to add some updates on how FMC is embedding this into FMSSG reporting and she managed the lively Q&A as I roamed the room and made some notes for later conversations based on those questions. We had hoped to role play some of the training materials/exercises that will be embedded within FMM in this hour, but the room, the late hour and the lack of actual market leaders attending meant a quick change to describing it only and instead spent time sharing our thoughts on the components of grassroots evaluation, which seemed to be a good choice.  As I shared later with the rest of the FMC team, I think grassroots evaluation work is evolving slowly but surely and our work in this area seems to be helpful to markets and to their partners.

The FMC team also spent some time with the WW evaluation team  (shout out to Katie and Elizabeth for finding the time between their many conference duties), continuing to find ways to streamline and support both portals without duplication. I can tell you we are all committed to that goal….

Lastly, I left feeling that I just saw and heard and met a whole bunch of people who are doing some excellent network level work in their states. It felt like it has only at a few moments in the last 10 years: that there is some sensible support for contextual strategies for increasing access at markets, and some help to use that support to change policies for markets and their direct marketing producers. But, also an awareness that there is danger in markets or networks in diving in the too-deep water before they are ready, before they have a plan for what this extra work is meant to do for their markets and how it will absorb it. Because what we know is to attempt that before examining the culture of the market or the willingness of the market leadership to invest years in this type of intervention is foolhardy*. I’d also point out how that the lack of production-side advocates in attendance to talk about how these strategies were changing regional food production (for the good and for the bad) jarred me slightly and I’ll hope for better participation at future summits.

(*…. for all of those uncertainties here is the process to change them:  market communities becoming true partners in the design of their projects, taking the time to work with their community in this process long before the funding starts, leading or sharing in the data collection process as well as in the analysis of that project and beyond that, being brave about seeking and sharing evidence of all of the market’s impacts. And if that is where your community is at, I can tell you that there are some people ready and willing to do just that, many of whom I just saw in Atlanta.)

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Technology session, FMC’s Jen Cheek asking another good question from the floor

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WW’s Katie Merritt, chatting with FMC’s Sara Padilla and Alex Canepa pictured. WW’s Elizabeth Atwell  (back of her head showing), Jen Cheek and yours truly also present

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Allison Karpyn’s incentive evaluation presentation

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FMC’s FMM presentation

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FMC’s audience involvement spectrum

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One of only 2 off-site meals, this one had with WW’s Gabrielle Langholtz who sang Hamilton the musical songs to the waiter. Not odd behavior if you know her…

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The food we ordered off that chalkboard menu; all great.

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The dog that came with my airbnb, Sadie, wondering why I am leaving so early on a cold day..

 

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Atlanta

Like any market leader worth her salt, my North Carolina pal Salem told me on the first day of the Wholesome Wave Summit in Atlanta that she was going to check out two of the public market projects around town, the Dekalb Market and the Ponce City Market. Of course, I invited myself along immediately. Once done with the days sessions and networking, and with her smartphone barking directions at us, we finally found our way to the first without too many wrong turns as the twilight became evening.

The Dekalb market is actually titled “Your Dekalb Farmers Market” and is in its 39th year of operation. Still managed by the same husband and wife that started it as a produce stand, it is more than 100,000 square feet of sales space of produce, meat, seafood, herbs, cheese, beer and wine and even a recycling center. Whether farmers have much if any relationship with it is not clear, but certainly, it serves a respectable amount of diverse needs, including offering meat prepared for multiple religious and cultural requirements and a wide selection of herbs and oils for varied ethnic meals.

It’s only a few miles outside of Atlanta and easily accessible for the 7 days per week that it is open. The parking lot is large and well lit, with the lot and the market set off from the road by itself. Once inside, the signs are many and include warnings for no photography being allowed. So do note that the photos that I include here were taken inadvertently by er…someone else.

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Lots of nice tomatoes available and they do sell by box too, although the price didn’t seem like any break at that amount.

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I counted 10 varieties of sweet potatoes

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Nice signage at the Dekalb Market

We bought a few items at YDFM,  with Salem noting as we left that each staff person had which languages that they were fluent in on their nametag. Shoppers were diverse and buying large amounts.

The second market isn’t far from the first, although this one is within the city of Atlanta proper. This “market” is brand new and clearly designed as a festival marketplace and situated within a larger (fancy) retail and housing development in an old Sears headquarters building. Parking was complicated, as some of the closer spaces were marked as 30 minutes or less (with signs firmly promising that towing strictly enforced, even after 7 p.m.) and others were allowed with paid parking from the parking station. Interestingly, the development had staff positioned at each pay station to assist and even though it was near freezing outside, they were extremely helpful and polite!

Once inside, we found that the space was still under construction, with small restaurants or prepared food stalls  lined up along the perimeter. The middle of the space looks to be on its way to becoming an office tower. Pictures wouldn’t do much, as the space was large and any picture would have shown lots of still under construction areas so I took no interior shots.

Those eating in the Ponce City Market were mostly of a type: young, white and informally dressed. We perused some of the eating places quickly, but as we were hungry, we found a warm and cheerful taco place with cocktails. Good staff, food excellent.

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2nd market: the Ponce City Market in Atlanta

 

Story about the amusement park opening on the roof in 2016 inspired by the original that was replaced by Sears.

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A New Potential Replacement for Body Mass Index 

West Virginia University computer scientists Syed Ashiqur Rahman and Donald Adjeroh proposed a new alternative to BMI: the Surface-based Body Shape Index (SBSI). Though decidedly more of a mouthful to say, the indicator is far more rigorous, based upon four key measurements: the body surface area (BSA), vertical trunk circumference (VTC), height (H), and waist circumference (WC).
Unfortunately, A Body Shape Index (ABSI), an alternative to BMI that garnered a lot of attention when it was proposed back in 2012, seems to have mostly fizzled out, earning only 83 mentions in PubMed, the international database for biomedical science, since its inception. Over the same period, BMI has been mentioned more than 34,000 times. The new indicator, SBSI, is probably doomed to the same fate. Thus far, it seems that simplicity trumps accuracy in health research, at least as far as BMI is concerned.

link to abstract

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Wrapping up 2015 with Food First

The third of 3 organizations that I am highlighting today. Of the three, this is the international organization, and one that has created some very thoughtful and provocative positions for food organizers. The democratization of all supporting systems is vital to winning food sovereignty and Food First has done admirable work on that level for 40 years.
The sophistication of their work on environmental issues, social justice, monetary policy, labor policies and much more allows all little markets and gardens to be a integral part of a huge movement. As someone who has seen many movements splinter or become proprietary before they matured enough to have wide impact, I am thankful to those who remember and work so that this rising tide carries all boats.
And way too often, those of us building those fulcrums of local food systems-farmers markets- focus only on doing and spend too little reflecting or analyzing on what has worked and what hasn’t. Lucky for us, Food First is on top of that too.
Through Food First, I have learned about dozens of inspiring campaigns across the globe and had access to some of our most influential thinkers. Spending a little time at the vision level and checking out what is happening at the global level is what makes working locally entirely satisfying. I hope that you find Food First as useful as I have.

Source: World Hunger: Ten Myths : Food First

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Wrapping up 2015 with Backyard Gardeners Network

Okay, I said that I would post two stories of organizations doing great work that help direct marketing producers and markets, but I decided I should support one organization in my own city too, so now it is three.
I chose this organization because it has quietly shared resources and space to anyone wishing to grow food, to work at a garden or increase food sovereignty in the Lower 9 or across New Orleans. I first met BGN’s E.D. Jenga Mwendo about 10 years ago and was able to spend some time with her then and have kept an eye on her organizing since. I am impressed with her enthusiasm for honest grassroots work and her willingness to partner with larger entities whenever necessary, and yet not allow her community to be swallowed up by their intentions. In other words, in a very turf-y area of organizing here in New Orleans (no pun really intended), she does her level best to rise above all of that and do what is good and nurturing.

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Source: ANNUAL UPDATE | Backyard Gardeners Network

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Salvation Army Is Measuring Poverty In Real Time

Here is an example of an innovative community-level data project that will lead to better policy decisions and increased support for the many services that SA offers. I can easily relate this to farmers markets data collection and found particular interest in the key indicators chosen and in this line: “a result due in part to the lack of information in the public domain, but also, the lack of uniform reporting that exists on both a national and local scale”, which also remains a problem for grassroots markets and other food initiatives.

This story also illustrates what could very well be the next step to Farmers Market Metrics: collected indexes that show a larger system inequity or effect,  possible once we establish which metrics are best compiled for different system measures. Those system measures can come from the work done by Center for Whole Communities and their Whole Measures, which were part of the initial research done for FMM.

 

The Salvation Army has rolled out a new tool for measuring poverty across time and geographic regions.

Out of the 600-plus services that the Salvation Army tracks — everything from the number of toys given out at centers across the country — the team of 30 researchers selected seven indicators of poverty for the index: meals, groceries, assistance for medical needs, utility payments, furniture, clothing and housing…

The index enlists Salvation Army data collected from the roughly 30 million Americans who receive assistance with the organization each year. Out of the 600-plus services that the Salvation Army tracks — everything from the number of toys given out at centers across the country — the team of 30 researchers selected seven indicators of poverty for the index: meals, groceries, assistance for medical needs, utility payments, furniture, clothing and housing. Together, these data points form a score within the index that’s been plotted to show month-to-month changes both nationwide and within each state, between 2004 and 2015. The result is a highly interactive graphic that shows a number of interesting trends, including which states haven’t returned to pre-recession levels of need: Pennsylvania, Indiana, Nevada, Michigan Kansas and Minnesota…

A decade’s worth of data in the index revealed a number of curious trends, including a consistent uptick in demand for assistance on utility bills in springtime. “You’d think it’d be the opposite, because it’s warmer weather,” says Osili. The data analysts at Indiana University went to their colleagues at the Salvation Army, who soon enough arrived at an explanation. “In many communities, particularly in the Northern part of the United States, it’s against the law to turn off somebody’s utilities during cold weather,” says Lt. Colonel Ron Busroe of the Salvation Army. “So in April, when it is springtime, people are coming to us to get their utilities paid.”

Another observation illuminated by the index: a September back-to-school bump in service needs at Salvation Army centers everywhere. Those are just a couple of the discoveries that have Dr. Osili excited about what could blossom from this collaboration between university researchers and a sprawling service provider. “It was a revelation and showed the need for these kinds of partnerships, because on our own we would not have immediately or intuitively thought of that.”

Source: Salvation Army Is Measuring Poverty In Real Time – Next City

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Counting cases and flats

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As Farmers Market Coalition and University of Wisconsin delve ever more into the design and the research around Indicators for Impacts, others interested in this work continue to ask for informal help in adding common-sense evaluation to their market work. In a recent conversation with a state market leader, we discussed testing new methods for evaluating vendor success besides just asking for sales numbers. One of those could be counting flats or boxes stacked, once sold. This is certainly not an exact science, but as an indicator of trends or of seasonal spikes, it could prove to be very handy.

For those vendors who sell a single product like these strawberries currently available at New Orleans markets, a market manager can easily note the stacked empty boxes or flats (the unsold flats remain in the truck out of the sun and away from harm). Currently, this vendor sells a pint for 4.00 and is not offering many quantity breaks yet as this is the very beginning of the season; of course, they will offer quarts, half flats and flats at different prices once the season begins in earnest.

Here we can see that she has already sold (around 2.5 hours into the market) 12 flats with 12 pints at 4.00 for a total of 566.00. Let’s assume that she sold a few flats to chefs and maybe offered samples and maybe a price break to a few of her regulars, or even to the market as it had school tour events that Tuesday, so let’s round it off to a day so far of around 700-750 in sales. She only has a few left, so maybe she brings in in the ballpark of 1000.00 on this market day. She also sells honey and some strawberry preserves, but those sales are minimal from my estimation, and are more about extending her visibility at markets on rainy weeks when she cannot pick or when the cold keeps her early berries under wraps.

We won’t make the mistake of assuming any of this is profit but it is helpful to monitor how some of the anchor vendors are doing at different points of the season. Their shoppers may very well travel to market primarily for their goods and then stop at other stalls to purchase more. No doubt that fruit vendors attract seasonal shoppers, especially at the  beginning, the height and at the very end of their fruit season when either specific types (early adopters, chefs, canners) or just more fruit lovers seek them out. Knowing who is drawn to the market by which anchor vendors and when can help pinpoint the marketing in future seasons.

The flat or case count also allows managers to understand the production strategy for a vendor and may help that vendor evolve it over time. For example, when this vendor does move to flat pricing later in the season, is that a moment for the market to add events and messaging to let more people know?  Or, should the market wait until the crowd begins to slow and then begin messaging? How much is planted and expected to be sold at different points in the season? What does the vendor consider a good day at these points: everything sold as quickly as possible or having enough for her regular shoppers? Can the market can handle more berries?

Additionally, can the market position like products nearby, like dairy, or at least add signage that points from one to the other on spikey days?

Lastly of course, this can be seen as another way to show sales among vendors that offers some contextual information too:

One vendor sold an average of 200 pints of local berries at every Tuesday market during the good weather of November and early December. The availability of berries that early in the season is due to this vendor adding a cold-hardy Canadian variety to their crop plan to extend berry availability at the market by two more months.

Or the picture can tell the story and be added to the report to the community at the end of the year.

The point is to think of gathering and using data as doable and as human-scaled as the market itself…

…and to get to that berry vendor early in the day.

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Can Hospitals Heal?

Read a great report today by The Democracy Collaborative that should be a must read for all food system organizers. It is vital that markets build their capacity to anchor their food systems, and hospital partnerships have evolved tremendously to assist with that. Hospitals can offer space for campus and other  market types, fund incentivizing healthy eating, change their purchasing to offer farmers another sales outlet, conduct research with markets, offer trained health professionals to assist with strategy and outreach and much more.

More on the campus market: this is one of the early types that came from Market Umbrella’s trans•act work; I have continued to use it as a framework when working with new market partners. I think campus markets can work in more cases, but the governance, products and partnerships have to be aligned closely to the goals of the market: So in this example, since the shopping population is usually drawn entirely from inside the campus,there may be a natural ceiling on sales for the vendors. Yet, the well designed campus market may find other ways to incentivize or reward these vendors including offering more exclusives on product offerings, rewarding consistent vendors with reduced fees, putting them first in line for institutional purchases, offering a pre-sold market box to campus members to bolster sales or even allowing those vendors to access the services for free on the day they come to sell at market!

The market may even hire its manager from the campus and should include campus market champions (using Kaiser-Permanente’s early language) on their board. Since the shopping base is more or less a controlled population, projects could focus more on sharing information for the campus and creating a welcoming and attractive respite or reward of hospital work or appointments.

 

The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute found that over 40 percent of the factors that contribute to the length and quality of life are social and economic; another 30 percent are health behaviors, directly shaped by socio-economic factors; and another 10 percent are related to the physical environment where we live and make day to day choices—again inextricably linked to social and economic realities. Just 10 to 20 percent of what creates health is related to access to care, and the quality of the services received.

Some call this new approach to health “the anchor mission,” meaning that a hospital not only provides charitable and philanthropic support for the community, but begins to re-orient its institutional business practices to benefit the place in which it is based.

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The Small Business Beginner’s Guide to Snapchat

“Last week, we polled readers about which social media platform they felt LEAST comfortable using heading into the new year…
In just one week, we had hundreds of marketers respond that Snapchat was their least comfortable platform for marketing.

Now it’s true that we haven’t written a LOT about the social media platform ourselves, but the last time we discussed Snapchat, we said that their new feature Discover was worth exploring as a business. Many of the publishers who have joined the partnership already have given positive feedback saying it has allowed them to reach a new audience they would have never found without Snapchat.

When diving into Pew Research, we found that the audience they speak of is mostly made up of 18 to 29-year-olds on their mobile devices.

So before you continue on to read about how to start using Snapchat for your small business, think about your audience and see if your target market may fit into this category. If not, Snapchat may not be the right platform for you, if your target audience does fit into this demographic – keep reading...”

 

 

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History of the Local Food Hub in New Orleans: Hollygrove and Jack and Jake’s

Food hubs are still so new that it is still unclear to most of us how they function best when they do function well. Are the best cooperatively managed or run by a non-profit or as sole proprietors? Funded slowly through income or quickly in one season with grants and other investments? How do they work with their sistren and brethren: farmers markets, CSAs, farmstands, mobile markets and the like? Here is how the USDA describes them:

Food hubs are businesses or organizations that “aggregate the crops of small farmers (to) provide enough local food for not just consumers but schools etc. By offering a combination of aggregation, distribution, and marketing services at an affordable price, food hubs make it possible for many producers to gain entry into new larger-volume markets that boost their income and provide them with opportunities for scaling up production.

Here is a link to their 2012 report.

Jack and Jake’s has called themselves the first food hub in Louisiana; this version came to New Orleans in 2009 through John Burns who has family ties to rural farming in the state and worked for a short time at the area’s first storefront aggregator of local goods, Hollygrove Market. Actually, at one time, Hollygrove Market was presented as a food hub too and received much attention with that description. It now focuses on urban farming education and selling local products collected from market farmers and others who drop off at the site, all sold at its storefront or online store. They do offer delivery for a very low fee when the purchase is under 50.00.  The term food hub is no longer found on their site.

So after working for Hollygrove for a few months, John Burns announced his for-profit and expansive food hub, originally to be located just a few blocks away.  He received a great deal of press and significant investment money and the offer of a few high-profile locations in the 5 years that he ran the project. Unfortuantely, by most local standards, the amount of attention this project received didn’t seem to match the output in that same period.

Finally, he left the project and then the developers renamed the project the Dryades Public Market. It’ll be interesting to see if he shows up again with his Jack and Jake’s brand.

Here is some timeline of this idea’s history that I could remember or dig up:

Jack and Jake’s, a New Orleans entrepreneurial startup company founded in 2009, has created the very first local food hub in Louisiana.

2010 Earhart location, called a grocery store at this point

2012 90,000+ sq ft food hub. The details are not included, but my memory is that the hub they refer to in this story were 2 locations: a warehouse in Slidell that they used as a collector for farmers to drop off items in 2012 but suffered damage in Hurricane Isaac and forced its closure and their Earhart location which was never opened.

2014 New location in a renovated school building on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd, complete with 1,000,000 city loan

2015 Founder John Burns out, new name as a public market but still called Jack and Jakes

2015: New CEO and new name

The long-delayed Jack & Jake’s Public Market in Central City has a new name and a new leader, reports the Advocate. The project, which benefited from a $1 million loan from the city, has rebranded as Dryades Public Market. Dan Esses, chef and owner of Three Muses on Frenchmen Street, will lead the project.

 

December 30, 2016

Dan Esses, the CEO of Dryades Public Market on Central City’s Orthea Castle Haley Boulevard, will leave the market in two months.

“It was just time for me to move on. I gave it as much as I could,” said Esses, who is also a partner in Three Muses on Frenchmen and Maple streets and owns the pasta company Esses Food. “This is an amicable move.”

Esses does not expect the market’s board to name a successor CEO. In a letter to shareholders and lenders, Esses said that eliminating his salary was necessary “in light of our economic reality.”

“There will be restructuring and downsizing,” he said in an interview. “They’re just looking to shrink the footprint a little.”

A consultant specializing in grocery stores and turnaround strategies has been hired and will provide concrete suggestions by the end of February.

 

Purpose Defined: Developing a Market Mission

A 2012 webinar that I did for FMC on mission statement development. As we move into deeper design of the Farmers Market Metrics Program, having markets that have their mission written and shared is extremely helpful when embarking on any in-depth evaluation system. Thought it might be helpful to repost.

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Farming oysters and clams

Recently, I heard an absorbing edition of Louisiana Eats (food and culture maven Poppy Tooker’s radio show full of “edible content”)  about seafood, and specifically about oysters and clam production along the Gulf Coast of the U.S. Poppy visits a new “off-bottom” oyster farm that is producing bigger and cleaner oysters than ever before and talks to our pal Rusty Gaude, marine biologist and seafood extension agent who has been working on increasing varieties of clams and oysters for many years.  I wrote a short piece about the oyster project a while back and now with Poppy’s show, could actually visualize and understand what they are doing down there.

As for Rusty’s excellent work, I wrote a bit about it recently here.

I know Poppy knows a great deal about oysters as she and I (with funding from Kellogg for our market organization to make teaching videos) had interviewed innovative oystermen in Puget Sound among others, a few years back. The amount of time that she volunteered for ours and other projects confirms how committed Poppy is to improving the lot for Gulf Coast fishing families while also educating folks on the need for reducing the erosion that is likely to sink New Orleans within the next 75 or so years.

To me, the link to all of this is the market organization that first introduced Poppy and Rusty (and me) and allows all kinds of leaders in the community to ask for feedback or space to test out ideas: this is the type of work that farmers markets can curate and encourage even if they are not the main recipient of those new goods-after all, more regional sustainable goods available helps everyone.

Read about another innovative project to reduce the erosion using artificial reefs that encourage oysters to grow and protect the coast.

 

 

 

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