Viva Farms tries to help new farmers overcome the many technical and financial barriers they face.
“There are five things every start-up farmer needs,” Mrs. Schaffer says. These include education in farm management, access to land, equipment (like tractors) and infrastructure (like irrigation and cold storage), start-up capital, and marketing and distribution support.
Viva Farms
The best policy newsletter on food policy-and I’m not just saying that because I’m on their board!
It’s really worth a subscription.
CFSC
For those deep in the market world, the year tends to go in patterns. Starting with workshops and meetings in the winter and early spring, we then gear up for the late spring season at market, then work madly throughout the summer, and end the year writing reports and attending to administrative needs.
Whether the market is year-round or your region has seasonal markets, it makes it hard to find the time to gain or share knowledge past those we see regularly at market.
As we start our workshop/conference season, I for one am looking forward to the Southern SAWG conference in Little Rock, AK. SSAWG functions as a regional entity, working with and through hundreds of associated organizations across 13 southern states. By building partnerships, sharing information and conducting analysis, they transform isolated ideas and innovations into practical tools and approaches for widespread use.
I have presented at past SSAWG conferences and am always energized by the farmer bustle and the very detailed assistance that is available to organizers across the South from this organization. We don’t have many large organizations down here, so we value each one we get!
There is still time to register for SSAWG; the information gained would be useful even if you are not a Southern farmer or food organizer. And if Little Rock is not possible for you to visit this year, at least sign up for their Newsletter.
An extremely useful article for the market world. Evaluation techniques should represent what is doable in a particular field while it asks people to stretch their imagination and analytical skills. Stepped evaluation (or as it is called in the article, “Stage-gate process”) for markets really is the best idea. marketumbrella.org’s 4M worksheets use that idea, and I know they have more coming along those lines in 2012…
to see the 4M sheet, go to marketumbrella.org and then log in to the marketshare project. View it under Shares.
A Disciplined Approach to Evaluating Ideas – Scott Anthony – Harvard Business Review.
This may cross farmers and market organizers minds at times, but in my experience few have prepared for the possibility of having interruption in the food system. Being a New Orleanian, I have personally experienced it twice, with the 2005 levee breaks and then the BP oil spill. Even after restarting the food system twice, we still have no master plan for another crisis, although a few organizations like marketumbrella.org have some systems in place.
If we are having such a difficult time, I can imagine what those regions who have not seen a crisis in the past 30 years have done in preparation! Do they have a back up plan for contacting farmers and producers when the internet and main phones are out? Do they know what their community foundations have planned? Is there any emergency funds built for food system people? Who are the state and regional government leaders they need to know?
Watching the informal sisterhood of food NGOs in Vermont recover from Irene has shown me what collaboration can do within a single political entity. However, I have heard little about what the multi-state approach has been to that same disaster.
Extreme weather is happening in more states and in more ways with the global weather instability that our carbon emissions have brought. What then is YOUR plan in YOUR region? Who are your key players? What is the sequence of events that will unfold if (or can I say) WHEN it happens in your food system?
27th Annual Convention February 10-16, 2012 in Williamsburg, VA
Great place for farmers and direct marketing organizers to learn and share techniques.
This report makes a great point about our unease with ugly fruit. I believe that the entire responsibility DOES go to those supermarkets that started to stage light and wax fruit for display. They have lost the ability to lure people in with smells or bursting ripeness. Let me also say that the finger pointing to the consumer in this story as the culprit is unsubstantiated; we have become conditioned based how food has been presented in our lifetime, and it’s up to the farmers markets (once again!) to change that perception with gentle encouragement.
WE can bring back the ugly fruit too, by simply encouraging our farmers to bring “seconds” and then to promote them. Why not ask the farmers to bring a few boxes that are not perfect and do as the Monica family in New Orleans does- label the box “chef special” which, of course brings every serious home cook to peer in the box and then drop their jaw at the lower price.
report
Poppy Tooker is a favorite of every serious (and lighthearted) food organizer in my region – and if you want to get honest about it – those smart ones far beyond her beloved Gumbo Nation.
I could go on and on about her, but let me say this: Food organizers should be so lucky as to have a Poppy Tooker in their midst. She has done many things, including being largely responsible for the speed in which we rebuilt our food system after the federal levee breaks by alternately cheering, cursing and championing those producers (and market managers like myself) that needed to get back up and running, finding us money and support and the words to explain ourselves.
For many years, she has reclaimed food and its dignity in dozens of ways, with unique style and dedication, even while making everyone shake their head with laughter or hide it in fear of her righteous wrath at times too.
All as a VOLUNTEER.
She wrote the glorious Crescent City Farmers Market cookbook and now finds herself a radio star of the first order on the public radio station in New Orleans. Listen to her online now, here, because she is going to be heard a lot more places soon, and you can say, “Oh Poppy? I been listening to her for YEARS..”
An excellent example of a market annual report. Clearly, this market engages lots of partners to help on a regular basis.
I truly believe that the most successful markets have the widest group of community partners assisting them.
Check out how much data they have for the year; each piece of that data will help another partner or a vendor or a market understand it’s function and potential a little better.
Sioux City
Ah, those wonderful people obsessed with a corner of the natural world or food system! I like to believe that Thoreau would have been one of them if he was forced to live in this complicated time. (I can see him as a early market shopper, complete with knotty bags and crates to return to farmers, animatedly discussing timber production with the bee guy over there in the corner.)
In any case, we need to celebrate every success that comes from our brethren (such as those in the part of the environmental movement that is as appropriately-scaled as our piece of the food system) as a victory for the alternative food system. A good example found now are the folks from the “Lost Ladybug Project” which search and categorize ladybug populations. Good news: the long-thought extinct Coccinella novemnotata which is the state insect of New York was found last summer during an event the organization held.
This beauty was found on Saturday July 30, 2011 on a sunflower at the Quail Hill Organic Farm in Amagansett, Suffolk County by Peter Priolo.
Kickstarter is a perfect market fundraising tool for a board member to manage. Why not use to raise money for a small endowment that could pay for a staff person ultimately or save for a vendor emergency/business enhancement fund?
From Jacqueline Church’s excellent food newsletter, even though its now more like 10 months since the disaster:’As I finish these edits, I am just back from the debrief by the Japanese Disaster Relief Fund team. They had are just back from Tohoku, Japan. Two months after the March 11 triple disaster, 115,000 people are still in living in 2,000 shelters scattered around Tohoku. Volunteers from within Japan and from Boston are on the ground in various towns, helping to clear debris, trying to elicit health status from quiet and stoic citizens in shelters.
Don’t focus on your heavy heart. Be grateful for what you have but don’t forget Japan. Giving feels good. Help in whatever way, small or grand, you can. Just do something. You will be enriched for it and feel less helpful in the face of the horrific news as it continues to unfold, as surely it will.”
And in the months to come. Remember to remember. Japan is counting on us.
“… countries that have business-friendly regulations and low tariffs have a higher incidence of obesity than countries with more tightly regulated economies.”
Markets can do well to encourage kitchen gardeners to socialize and find ways to encourage share information – maybe even to curate those discussions at the market.
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 