Many cities are feeling the pressure from both the entrepreneurs who want to start new businesses and from the restaurants and coffeehouses that see these mobile vendors as competition that are allowed to live without the hassle of the rules of a storefront.
Interesting that Seattle is expanding the area for these trucks, not restricting them.
The tip I read in Larry Leach’s HuffPostcolumn gave yesterday is another excellent idea for markets with chalk or dry wipe signs at their entrances:
I also have yet to see a retailer place a reminder sign on their entrance, “Did you remember your reusable bag?” Now that would show shoppers they care for the environment, especially if they GAVE you a reusable bag with their logo on it.
His advice is often geared to the small business with sensible tips and ideas for all sizes. Do yourself a favor, get a board member or a volunteer to subscribe to his blog’s RSS.
Larry Leach is an advertising sales rep for 11 Calgary Community Newsletters and the British Canadian newspaper. He is chair of ARTICS a Calgary based education group, publicity director for Crossroads Community Association and past president of Deerfoot Soccer.
His advertising blog (2011 Canadian Weblog Awards Nominee) can be found at larrytheadman.blogspot.com
As markets find more ways to measure themselves, natural capital will have to be an important category. Yet, the local food system is not always the lowest user of energy (sometimes the lack of centralization in distribution seems to work against us) but of course, we know that will balance out by the green style of shopping, innovative farming, and intentional planning of the market organizers. An example such as the Crescent City Farmers Market which no longer sells plastic bottles of water, but simply filters water and offers it free or sells a reusable cup to those who forget theirs. In many ways, markets should work hardest on the environmental issues of farming and consumerism, because they come the hardest.
Environmental Working Group has released a carbon footprint for meat eaters. It may be worthwhile to link or to print for your shoppers and farmers to read through. As usual, we don’t need to preach but to lead with information and allow people to make good healthy choices.
EWG
One of the most important roles for farmers markets is to encourage this type of innovation and allow the farmer a feedback loop from a diverse group of shoppers.
However, the story doesn’t say where the original grant came from though.
On June 16, the House approved H.R. 2112, the fiscal year 2012 (FY 2012) agriculture appropriations bill, by a vote of 217-203. The House voted to cut nutritional assistance, conservation, and renewable energy programs significantly. Overall, the FY 2012 agriculture appropriations bill would cut $2.7 billion (13.4 percent) in annual discretionary spending from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) below current FY 2011 funding levels. These reductions, if enacted, would follow deep cuts Congress recently enacted in the USDA’s FY 2011 budget. Funding for food and agriculture programs in FY 2012 would be cut more than 25 percent below FY 2010 spending levels on average.
As always, I post these in the hope that it will be useful for some of you to embed in your own websites or newsletters. Never doubt that different voices saying the same message will hit different audiences over time. So keep the message alive.
Saw this story over the weekend. I am…troubled.
Here are the current locations for Farmageddon screenings..more should be coming soon.
July 8th – 21st
New York City
Cinema Village
22 East 12th Street
July 17th
Bethlehem PA
Starfish Brasserie
July 22nd – 26th
Portland OR
Hollywood Theater
August 6th
Palm Springs CA
Camelot Theater
August 11th
Tampa FL
Roosevelt 2.0
August 20th
Sedona AZ
Sedona Public Library
Aug 26th – 31st
Chicago IL
Gene Siskel Film Center
Aug TBA
Boulder CO
University of Colorado International Film Series
Sept TBA
Cleveland OH
Cleveland Institute of Art
Thank you for supporting your local farmer!
Kristin Canty
Director, Farmageddon
If you have a large group that would like to put together a screening for your area, you can contact us at Farmegeddonmovie.com. Currently, we are aiming for a short theatrical release so that we can get this issue into the mainstream press. We are also encouraging community screenings in places that don’t have a local theater.
In 2001, CIW launched the Campaign for Fair Food with the first-ever farmworker boycott of a major fast-food company. The national boycott of Taco Bell called on the fast-food giant to take responsibility for human rights abuses in the fields where its produce is grown and picked.
The logic behind the Campaign for Fair Food is simple. Major corporate buyers — companies such as Publix, Ahold, Kroger and Wal-Mart — purchase a tremendous volume of fruits and vegetables, leveraging their buying power to demand the lowest possible prices from their suppliers. This, in turn, exerts a powerful downward pressure on wages and working conditions in these suppliers’ operations.
CIW
Better access to supermarkets — long touted as a way to curb obesity in low-income neighborhoods — doesn’t improve people’s diets, according to new research. The study, which tracked thousands of people in several large cities for 15 years, found that people didn’t eat more fruits and vegetables when they had supermarkets available in their neighborhoods.The results, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, throw some cold water on the idea that lack of access to fresh produce and other healthful foods is a major driver in the disproportionate rates of obesity among the poor, or that simply encouraging grocery chains to open in deprived areas will fix the problem, said study lead author Barry Popkin, director of the Nutrition Transition Program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
This last Saturday the Crescent City Farmers Market hosted another hot summer Marketeer event. The scavenger hunt was lively all day with kids rushing back and forth looking for vegetables and fruits. Just take a second and think about that sentence again for a minute- kids rushing around for good food.
At the end of the hunt, the kids got their very own BPA-free Marketeers water bottle and parents got a reprieve from amusing bored kids for a few hours.
Next week, a seafood cooking display for the kids…
Marketeers display at CCFM
The excellent people in Asheville North Carolina are hiring. Just so you know, they get 100-200 resumes for this type of position, so leading applicants will have strong relevant experience and skills. Applications close in two weeks.
Job Opening
Consider yourself a human again. More than one industry grocery giant is experimenting with ridding their stores of the self-checkout lines. I would assume that the stores losses were climbing (from theft at those checkouts and from people just walking out with stuff since there is less personnel up there to watch), and that the complaints also went up (no friendly interactions makes shoppers feel vulnerable so they are more critical.)
And, I’ll suppose that the growth of public markets is also showing the industrial system how to regrow trust and dignity when shopping.
Story
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 