Farmers Market Coalition

Just in time for National Farmers Market Week, the Wallace Center has announced a second printing of their popular spiral bound farmers market resource guides, initially released late last fall. “Getting Started with Farmers Markets” is a colorful introduction to product diversity, display, pricing, and marketing techniques for vendors. “Recruiting Vendors for a Farmers Market” its companion publication, targets current and would-be market managers and sponsors. It features an introduction to market planning, promotion, and recruiting and retaining farmers, as well as eight brief case studies of market organizations around the United States.

Print-friendly PDFs of “Recruiting Vendors for a Farmers Market” and “Getting Started with Farmers Markets” are available as to preview on line on the Wallace Center web site. To receive free print copies to disseminate to vendors or managers at markets, events, or conferences, download and complete the request form here. Submit your completed request form to Matthew Kurlanski at the Wallace Center for Sustainable Agriculture by including it in an e-mail to mkurlanski@winrock.org.

.

It is generally agreed that product diversity at a farmers market attracts shoppers, and as time-conscious consumers, we all understand the value of one-stop shopping. Handiwork from local artisans and craftspeople can complement food products, reinforce in consumers’ minds the market as THE place to go for all things locally produced and potentially increase all vendors’ sales. On the other hand, markets designed with farmers as the primary beneficiary might rightfully cringe at the idea of having the market’s reputation devolve to that of a bargain barn with products of unknown origin. So how can a market expand its offerings beyond agricultural products while preserving, and even improving, its integrity as a purveyor of local farm products? Some markets only allow crafts that are agriculturally related, like ones made with wood or wool, or that directly complement the agricultural products, like a hand crafted ceramic vase or set of plates would be used for flowers and food. Recognizing that each market takes a unique approach to the issue of craftsmanship at markets, FMC asked Vic Gutman, FMC Member and Co-Founder of the Omaha Farmers Market, to explain his market’s policy.

By Vic Gutman

The issue of crafts is a perennial issue among farmers markets around the country. I can easily look at this dilemma from both perspectives. As a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, I helped establish an artists guild in the early 1970s. We lobbied the farmers market there to accept more craftspeople and to integrate them among the green growers. There was a strict cap on the number of crafts vendors that they would allow and they were relegated to a far flung corner of the market. The farmer vendors seemed to resent the crafters although they were popular with the buying public.

My company now manages (and started) Omaha’s largest arts festival and the Omaha Farmers Market. Although I sympathize, from a lifetime of working with artisans, their plight to make a living, I believe that it is imperative to strike a good balance of products at the farmers market. We have more vendors applying to participate in the market than we have spaces to allocate. This forces us to prioritize applications. We believe that it is essential to maintain the integrity of our market as a green market and not let it morph into something else - such as a crafts market or a flea market.

There are some who believe that a farmers market should only feature produce and fresh cut flowers and bedding plants. I’m not that much of a purist. I think that most of our customers appreciate a variety of products to choose from although they do expect that the majority of vendors will sell locally grown fruits, vegetables and flowers.
With all of this in mind, we have established the following guidelines:

1. At least 50% of our vendors each week must sell locally grown produce, flowers or bedding plants. This is the heart and soul of our market;
2. We cap hand-made crafts and art at a maximum of 20% of the vendors for any given week. This includes vendors who sell both produce and crafts. If a vendor sells both (and we have a few who do) we count them as a craft vendor;
3. Not more than 30% of the vendors in any given week can sell anything else, including baked goods, prepared foods, jams and jellies, handmade soap, etc.

What every vendor has in common is that they must personally grow it, bake it, make it or cook it or they can’t sell at the market.

The craft vendors at OFM are fully integrated into the market. They aren’t segregated or treated as second class vendors in any way. We don’t have a formal jury process, but I review all of the crafts vendor applications personally and confirm that everything sold is made by the applicant. We require slides or photographs of the work for first time vendors. Our list of permitted products, which is a supplement to the rules and regulations, makes clear to potential vendors from the beginning what is NOT allowed:
1. Anything you did not have a direct hand in making
2. Anything you are selling on consignment or purchased wholesale
3. Anything offensive to community taste standards
4. Anything not meeting the standards of the Omaha Farmers Market
5. Anything commercially produced, assembled from commercially available parts, plans, kits or cast from commercial molds.

I don’t believe that the presence of crafters affects the sales of our produce vendors. Most people coming to the market are there to purchase food and buy crafts on impulse. We have never had any complaints from farmers about the crafts and no farmer vendor has ever been turned away from selling at the market because of craft vendors. We will always find room for farmers, but there is a waiting list for crafts vendors.

We are considering starting a Sunday market that will have a different vendor mix. The Sunday market would allow for more crafts to be sold. We won’t call it a farmers market or promote it as a farmers market- it will probably be called the Sunday Market. We might even allow as much as 50% crafts at this market and a higher percentage of prepared food. We would probably hold this market only once a month during the warm weather months.

To see how other farmers markets approach artisanship, visit FMC’s growing selection of Sample Rules and Regulations. If you have a policy on crafts at market that you’d like to share as a sample for our upcoming on-line library, please e-mail it to submit@farmersmarketcoalition.org.

Tags: Crafts at farmers markets.

If you’re not already one of the 130 people who’ve subscribed to the FMC listserv in the last several weeks, you can do so by signing up here. As the network grows, the listserv will offer great opportunities to learn and share with members of the farmers market community from across the country.

.

Mention in casual introductory conversation that you’re a farmers market manager and you’re likely to elicit responses like “Oh, that must be so much fun!” with the implication that your job involves little more than sipping lemonade in the shade, chit-chatting with shoppers, and getting as much free produce as you could possibly want. Explaining the myriad complexities of successfully managing a market might lead you into a wild hand-gesturing diatribe, so you just smile, nod, and wonder to yourself: Does anyone understand me?
We do. It’s time market managers finally began getting recognized among their peers for all that they do. As part of its Best Practices Project, FMC is looking for market managers and sponsors who are willing to share resources that could potentially be included in guides, fact sheets, or other case studies. At this stage, FMC seeks resources on the following:

Product Verification and Rule Enforcement
Does your market have a policy in place for verifying that products were grown by the vendor, or do you operate on trust? Are there procedures in place for making allegations or anonymously voicing concerns about another vendors product origin? Does the manager, a committee of vendors, an Extension agent, or another third party conduct farm inspections?

Farmer Recruitment and Retention
How does your market attract and retain vendors, especially in lower-income or lower-population communities where a farmers return on investment is not immediate? What strategies do you have in place to ensure a diversity of products, for example reduced fees, booth sharing, or other innovative programs designed to keep farmers coming back. If you have been involved in a market that closed because it could not attract and retain vendors, we want to know about that, too.

Please submit your policies, procedures, program descriptions, or other documentation and give us an honest account of what works well (and what doesn’t) on FMC’s resource submission page. If you don’t have a specific written document but would like to share a success story, please send a brief e-mail to submit@farmersmarketcoalition.org with your contact information, and we’ll be in touch.

.

This summer, FMC will be sponsoring a Fellowship that will work closely with marketumbrella.org on trans•act, a visionary research project that will pilot a social capital evaluation tool at eight markets in the Los Angeles area. Readers familiar with marketumbrella.org’s Sticky Economic Evaluation Device (SEED), will not be surprised that the tool being developed through trans•act is named Neighborhood Exchange Evaluation Device, or NEED. Once finalized, NEED will allow individual markets to evaluate their effect on the neighboring community as a whole, not just within the market space.

Funded by the Ford Foundation, trans•act is part of a model that places farmers markets as the nexus that links financial (farmers), human (consumers), and social (communities) capital, “Then,” says Robin Moon, Senior Research Fellow for trans•act, “we can begin to communicate to various constituencies why and how they may wish to utilize farmers markets.”

This summer, the NEED tool will be finalized through on-site research at eight host markets, seven of which are operated by Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles (SEE-LA), and one by Kaiser Permanente. Working with the rest of the trans•act team, the FMC Fellow will lead a team of surveyors to collect data via in-person interviews at the market, observe (“shadow”) market patrons, and conduct resident interviews in the immediate vicinity surrounding the market. to bring the pilot research to scale and construct a working tool to measure the community impact of farmers markets.

During its first summer of research in 2007, trans•act executed a comparative study of the community health impact of farmers markets. Robin Moon, who also led that first stage of research, is enthusiastic about partnering with SEE-LA on this next phase. The collaboration was solidified in March after representatives from both marketumbrella.org and FMC met with staff and conducted preliminary site visits at the seven markets sponsored by the organization. “SEE-LA focuses on the supply side (producers and vendors) as well as demand side (consumers and residents) to achieve a holistic growth of the community it serves. It shares its mission and philosophy with marketumbrella.org that way.”

The other research site, Woodland Hills Kaiser Permanente Farmers Market, will provide the team an additional lens through which to view social capital. “Kaiser and SEE-LA markets are different in terms of their management methods, consumer base, specific vision and stakeholders. However, they share the same aspiration of reaching different communities through fresh food, producers, and markets. Through our research we will see how they are similar, unique in their own ways, and how they would project their growth in terms of economic, human and social achievement.”

Learn more by visiting the trans•act web site.

.

Sources at AMS indicate that the Secretary of Agriculture has permanently designated the first week of every August (Sunday through Saturday) as National Farmers Market Week. Velma Lakins, Agricultural Marketing Specialist at AMS, says that the designation “allows our constituents to start the planning process before we officially announce the Secretary’s Proclamation each year.” A proclamation from the Secretary announcing this year’s Farmers Market Week (August 3^rd-9^th) should be announced shortly.

.

by Don Wambles, President of the Farmers Market Coalition

Springtime marks the beginning of a new season. After the cold, wet days of winter, farmers are ready to begin spring plantings in preparation for market season. Consumers remember the last fresh tomato from last year and are anxious for this year’s first strawberry. Market organizers are busy with preparations for another market season. And yet, while there is great excitement and anticipation this time of year, there is one element of great uncertainty that many of us tend to overlook. The Farm Bill that authorizes and appropriates funds for commodities, nutrition, conservation, trade, credit, research, rural development, forestry, energy and horticulture programs must be renewed every five years. Current law was to expire September 30, 2007. However, Congress passed an extension to the current law to allow time to craft a new Bill.

After months of stalemate, lawmakers will begin a formal farm bill conference Thursday, April 10, 2008, with House leaders backing a new bipartisan deal that sets a price tag for the bill and the offsets to pay for it. Under the agreement, new spending on agriculture programs would be limited to $6 billion above the $280 billion budgetary baseline for the bill. The new House plan cleared the way for House leaders to name conferees with just over a week before the current 30-day farm bill extension expires on April 18. Progress on the five-year bill has been stymied due to disputes between House and Senate tax writers about offsets for as much as $10 billion in extra spending. The Senate named its conferees shortly after passing its version of the bill in December. President Bush has said he will seek a one-year extension of the 2002 farm law if lawmakers cannot negotiate a final bill by the April 18 deadline.

FMC has continued our efforts to educate Conference members on the need to support increased funding included in the Senate version for the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP) and the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP). We cannot afford to wait another year for a Farm Bill. Baseline funding will certainly be less a year from now. A new Farm Bill as late as June is better than extending current law until next year.

We said goodbye to a great friend and advocate this month with the retirement of Dr. Kenneth C. Clayton (Ken), Associate Administrator at USDA, AMS. He delivered so much with so little fanfare or expectation of reward. Ken has plowed more barren ground to produce benefits for others and quietly used his influence and power to help those that have no idea who to thank or why. If you are touched by agriculture in America, you owe Ken Clayton a thank you.

Ken was a bridge builder. His latest bridge involved the formation of the Farmers Market Consortium. In his words, “It is my firm view that the Consortium has come to play an interesting and important role in advancing the cause of farmers markets and other forms of direct marketing. We found a way to bridge the stovepipes that distinct program authorities and organizational separation sometimes cause. We found a way to be inclusive of state governments, the Farmers Market Coalition, and others with an interest in farmers markets… I do not think I’ve ever seen a more focused, cohesive group working together to identify priorities for the advancement of farmers markets.The opportunity to interact with others sharing a common interest in promoting farmers markets is, in itself, worth the effort.”

Though Ken will certainly be missed, FMC welcomes David R. Shipman as the new Associate Administrator of AMS, and looks forward to working with him in the future. On behalf of the agriculture community, we thank Ken for his many years of service and wish him the best. And to our many readers, a happy spring!

.

This interview was conducted earlier this spring with Susan Sauter, founding board member and treasurer of the West Virginia Farmers Market Association (WVFMA), formed in 2007 with start-up funding from a Specialty Crops grant. WVFMA recently became a member of the Farmers Market Coalition.

FMC: Susan, we understand that you wrote the grant that helped get this organization off the ground. What made you realize that such an association was a good idea?

Sauter: Having been a vegetable farmer and then serving as the treasurer of the Morgantown Farmers Market Growers Association, it was clear to me that farmers markets in West Virginia were largely uncoordinated, with duplicated efforts and inefficiencies in creating policies, procedures, websites, and marketing materials. Following the lead of other state efforts like the Farmers’ Market Federation of New York, I thought a state association could strengthen viability of all markets, many of which are in rural areas.

Q: Tell us about your membership structure. What services do you hope to provide to members?

A: Hammering out membership categories required a broad and flexible approach, and the core group quickly recognized the need to be more inclusive than I would have initially thought just on my own. We are including orchard markets, single on-farm markets; consumers seeking local foods; and even farmers market vendors who branch out into other directly marketed, value-added farm goods. Members self-select either a Market Membership (farmers market or grower groups representing two or more growers), Associate Membership (other agricultural groups that do not qualify for a market membership) or Friend of the Market that offers four self-described options: Founder, Patron, Farmer/Artisan/Market manager or General Public. Neither Associates nor Friends have voting privileges, but can participate in most other activities.

As far as benefits are concerned, the board has formed an insurance committee to review and compare insurance options. If we are able to offer insurance, as many state FMAs do, I think that will be a membership magnet.

Q: It’s been less than a year since you received start-up funding. What has WVFMA been able to accomplish in that time?

A: Well, our grant funding from the West Virginia Department of Agriculture was only $6,334, but it’s amazing what we’ve accomplished with such a small amount thanks to in-kind resources from the Extension Service, who was our fiscal agent for the grant. Starting from scratch, we managed to assemble some farmers market leaders at a core meeting in August to create bylaws and membership categories. A bylaw draft was marked up and reviewed over the next several hours and approved one month later via e-mail vote. Then I found a local designer to create a logo and a membership brochure. In February, we held our first membership meeting at the end of the West Virginia Small Farms Conference, which saved us a lot of unnecessary travel. We’ve also written another grant application to help establish a Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaign, and are waiting to hear back on that. We also just launched our web site, www.wvfarmers.org, which is of course a work in progress.

Q: Sounds like you’ve moved fast. Is the pace comfortable?

A: Funny you should ask. A grant application was put together over one single weekend, and shortly thereafter the board member who put most of the energy into it resigned, less than a month after being elected! It was a shame to lose him, but I really think the pace he was running was too fast for anyone to sustain, or for anyone else to keep up. In a way, I’m glad we’ve learned some of these lessons in interpersonal relations early on.

Q: Do you have any advice to give about effectively communicating across geographic distance?

A: Not everyone uses e-mail to the same extent or has internet capacity for all sorts of reasons–these are farmers running their own businesses, starting up their greenhouses, sitting on boards of their own local farmers market. One more e-mail that makes them have to click on a shared website workspace to be downloaded via dial-up is two counts against that communication getting through. When I absolutely need response, I say so in the subject line of the email: “Need vote on domain name ASAP,” for example. Those are the emails I get response to. All they need is in the body of that email, not in an attachment or a link to something else. Even in the dead of winter when farm life slows a little, you can’t expect other board members to be spending the day in front of their computers.

Q: Any final advice for other states trying to establish a state-wide association?

A: Yes. Definitely take the time to meet face to face and get to know one another before you start creating a leadership infrastructure via e-mail and telephone. Although it seems urgent, the work of a farmers market association is so large that it can’t be done overnight. Be patient and flexible.

Visit the new WVFMA on-line at www.wvfarmers.org.

.

Staff at USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) have been hard at work since November’s first ever National Farmers Market Summit, and the final draft of the Summit Proceedings Report is now available at their web site. You can read about the 12 priorities identified by the 75 Summit participants, as well as some of the strategies and opportunities for collaboration discussed at the event. Even if you’re not tempted by this seminal 82 page document, take a moment to visit the newly redesigned AMS farmers market web site.

.

On March 18^th and 19^th, farmers market leaders convened in Monterey, California from as far as New York City and New Orleans in order to facilitate a two day training for managers and vendors. This event, hosted by the Agriculture & Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) marked the first training led by the Farmers Market Network, a growing network of leaders and practitioners convened by the Wallace Center at Winrock International. Matthew Kurlanski of the Wallace Center and Alan Hunt of the Northwest Midwest Institute coordinated the workshop, with funding from a Risk Management Agency Outreach grant.

The training was split between two parallel tracks: one for managers and one for farmers, with interpreters for Spanish speaking participants. Topics included measuring market performance, managing markets for diversity, EBT and community marketing, manager expectations of vendors (and vice versa), and much more.
Deborah Yashar, Food Systems & Communications Coordinator at ALBA and also a member of the network, was grateful to partner with the Wallace Center to host the training. “It was wonderful to engage farmers market practitioners from all over California and the country in one room to voice common challenges, rejoice in shared successes, plant new ideas and forge stronger paths in our work.”
After the last session, participants visited the Old Monterey Marketplace to engage in a Q and A session with market manager Ray Headley, who discussed the market’s recent green initiative to ban plastic bags from the market and answered questions from the workshop participants about that effort’s potential effect on the farmers’ bottom lines.

This is the third national convening of the Network that the Wallace Center has held and the first conference for market managers and farmers as part of a multi-year initiative to develop resources and build capacity within the farmers market community. Two more conferences will be held in 2008, including a pair of sessions on farmers markets at the Southwest Marketing Network Conference in May and a regional conference for market managers and farmers in the Mississippi Delta in the early Fall. In addition to hosting conferences, the Wallace Center and the Network partners are actively involved in developing and distributing resources on variety to topics relevant to managers and farmers. More information on these resources can be found on the Coalition’s website or on the Wallace Center’s website.

With continued funding from the Risk Management Agency, FMC and the Wallace Center expect to host two regional workshops in 2009 and develop a Risk Management Curriculum for direct-marketing farmers and the market managers. Currently, the Wallace Center, FMC and other Network partners are working to complete a Risk Management Tool-Kit for managers and farmers. This Tool-Kit will provide resources on insurance, food safety, post-harvest handling, market governance, EBT & WIC and other relevant topics. Markets and organizations are encouraged to submit their developed resources through FMC’s Learn & Share page, and to stay tuned to August 2008 for copies of the final product.

.