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For the Love of Farmers Markets-BC conference

Keynote speaker at British Columbia’s farmers market (BCAFM) conference is FMC’s Executive Director Stacy Miller: In her “Integrity at the Market speech,” Stacy will share the variety of models that farmers markets across the US are using to maintain authenticity and live up to the expectations of their communities, their customers, and their vendors.
“Trust, transparency, and the ability to empower consumers to learn and ask questions about food and farming are among the many unique values of farmers markets,” explains Miller, “but how do we honestly evaluate our progress in achieving these values?”

'For the Love of Farmers Markets'.

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Longtime vendors are heart of French Market: Letter | NOLA.com

In my old city is an old shed market that is constantly undergoing its own trials and tribulations. It is the very heart of our city, being the spot that Native Americans traded their wares and the French built the city around. However, in my lifetime it has become a set of buildings without a plan.
The link leads to a letter to the editor of our local paper and it and the ensuing comments are important to note as they come from some of the vendors. I am not sure the entire story is being told in this letter- well, let’s say it is not, nor did the letter writer expect to cover 250 years of history in it.

I will add that as a farmers market organizer I ran a weekday open-air market in this place as a favor to this corporation and its history as our market heritage, and one of the only things I was glad of post-September 2005, was that my organization could rethink that decision before reopening. We did not reopen that market- it was the only one that we ultimately did not and had more to do with resources and new management unknown to us, then the potential of the place. But, it was a difficult place to run an entrepreneurial market, and this is from someone who ran 3 others weekly and another holiday market every December.

There are many ideas that could work here, but none of them (in my mind) start with reducing the vendors without a strong plan to reinvent the base. I still am not sure the management know who their target audience is and how to reach them. I am not sure they even know how to find their target vendors or how to work with existing vendors to maximize their hard work and the market’s investment.
In short, even though I study markets daily, I am not sure of anything when it comes to the French Market.

Longtime vendors are heart of French Market: Letter | NOLA.com.

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How Mardi Gras Boosts New Orleans’ Economy

Economic measurement is the first ruler we need to apply to the world of food systems, and specifically to our farmers markets. In many ways, Mardi Gras has a lot of similarities to the alternative food system- it’s informal, held mostly within the public space and all about entrepreneurs. This report shows how spring Carnival season adds value to the GNO region. This type of evaluation wis possible for markets to have for their own by using marketumbrella.org’s SEED tool which shows the impact a farmers market has on its own region.

How Mardi Gras Boosts New Orleans' Economy.

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Mobile Market Greenpaper

This is a Greenpaper that I wrote while I was with marketumbrella.org (with help from Leslee Goodman, technical writer and editor) on the phenomena of mobile markets. I have had loads of requests for it recently, so am posting it here. It is available on marketumbrella.org’s marketshare page, which remains an excellent site for markets to find resources, as does the FMC Resource Library. The mobile market idea is interesting, but I believe that it is a short term fix that benefits the industrial system of food, rather than extending the reach of the alternative system we are creating. Because, without adding dignity and sharing wealth, nothing will change.

PDF

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Editorial: County should not over-regulate farmers markets

This is from St.Louis which has received new proposed regulations for farmers markets from the state that to the editorial writer sound like “special event rules warmed over.” Very well put.
The need to push back on over regulating market farmers does need to go in hand in hand with a well managed risk mitigation strategy on the markets behalf. In other words, we should run ahead with good, appropriate rules rather than boo from the back.

Editorial: County should not over-regulate farmers markets.

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Supermarkets feedback: “specialty market gone corporate”

An interesting view of grocery stores using “alternative concepts” as a marketing ploy. (cheat sheet-some see right through it)

Am I being whiney and ungrateful? Yes. Wegmans responds to every item on my consumer wish list. It has consistency and dependability. It won’t be sold to some large chain that will destroy its quality, as was the case with Kings and Zagara’s. But that’s the problem. It is the large chain. It’s the specialty market gone corporate. In the tradition of American cooptation of the alternative option, it has made the alternative option into standardized fare.

The Smart Set: Supermarkets
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Global Calories Consumed – Visual

Important to remember where we sit within the global system in areas that really count.
Map

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2011 Food and Freedom Rides

Here’s an excellent story of people using social justice framework to show the inequities of the food system. Welcome these Riders when they come to your area or tell your colleagues when they arrive in theirs. Every significant issue is tangled around the industrial food system; let’s keep reminding the world of that.

From the LIVE REAL website:

Black farmers continuing their fight for Civil Rights. Farmworkers organizing for fair working conditions. Native youth restoring traditional foodways. Farmers struggling against Monsanto in the cornbelt. City residents reclaiming vacant lots for vibrant gardens.

These are the hidden stories of America.

Across the country, everyday people are responding to a failing food system, asserting the right of all people to real food, real culture and real jobs.

This summer, Live Real commemorates the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights era with a journey exposing injustices and innovations in communities across America, from the ‘hood to the heartland. We honor our political ancestors as we continue their journey for justice.

Thirteen riders, including Live Real staff, Real Food Fellows and allies, will travel across America to expose and uplift stories from farmers, food chain workers and #foodandfreedom fighters. The riders will teach youth about federal food policy, and carry our message to our political decision-makers: Real food is a real solution.

Live blog of Food and Freedom Riders

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Bad localvore story

In my mind, the story linked at the end of this post is like ending up the wrong side of the tracks in a regional food system: You’re viewing the poor part of it (in this case, in values) and maybe it’s wrong to see it as being part of the same place at all.
Trumpeting a man made water-reliant artificial system for growing what is known among the wild-caught fishers in my neck of the woods as “textured protein” rather than understanding that shrimp are creatures that are born and live in a complex free flowing water system, such as our estuaries around the Gulf of Mexico is dangerous wrong-side-of-the-tracks behavior.
And instead of pointing out that true localvores eat what is raised as part of their bioregion, this story extols the virtue of every food item available 24/7 in a desert.
I do have access to seafood and as a result of that bounty, live with the uncertainty of life on the edge of a massive waterway that is prone to hurricanes and dead zones from run off up North. I do have access to seafood, but go without fresh corn or stone fruit being available locally and only see those wonderful items when I travel to another food system. And that, to me, is the definition of a localvore.

Las Vegas story

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The Whole Foods Rap

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Survey on Market Finances

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Calendar Intern needed

The National Young Farmers’ Coalition seeks a “Calendar Intern!”

They seek a “reliable, enthusiastic person to help fill the NYFC events calendar full of young farmer events, from coast-to-coast. It would require probably a few hours to start, and then no more than an hour a week after that. This is a super low-key and extremely helpful way to pitch in.”

Email lindsey@youngfarmers.org, if you’re interested.

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