When you go to the farmers’ market, the assumption is: you’re buying from the farmers, or the producers of the crafts, the foods, the products. The connection that we feel with the producers adds value to the goods. We can find out about everything that went into the production and confab about how we plan to use their creations. The appreciation is direct and so is the economic relationship. Pesticides? GMOs? Preservatives? You can get all of your questions answered at the point of sale. Or, maybe you just like a glimpse of the back-story of the things you buy.
On the other hand, maybe you’re not focused on all those details. Shopping outdoors, amongst friends, with tasty snacks in the mix. It’s a great way to spend an hour or two, briefly immersed in your community and a relatively conscientious marketplace. The actual growers/producers may not be able to take time away for the PR duty of person-to-person sales. So a couple country bumpkins hauling someone else’s goods to the market near you is no biggie. Or even a downtown coffee shop, cafe or market, talking a good game about local and natural, these are just the means we have to obtain the good stuff from the surrounding area and feel good about it.
It’s not mandatory that you approach farmers markets and local-economy-focused shopping with an extra critical perspective. But, the details matter to some. The Umbrella Market is trying to make their South of the James markets totally “producer-only.” Sounds good, but some of your favorites might not be there any more when that happens. Of course, not every market will be playing by those rules (maybe for the best, if vendors are suddenly forced to relocate to, say, the Monument Market or St. Stephen’s). And sometimes, it’s just not really clear where to draw the line or what the difference is between a farmer, his or her representatives, and a middle man.
The example in Richmond that’s most visible is Farm to Family (F2F), the bus and their more recent market in Mechanicsville. They’ve been conspicuously booted from some of Richmond’s farmers markets, though there hasn’t been much public discussion about that. I wish there was, cuz it sounds like a juicy story (Ahem. Anonymous comments are permissible here, by the way.) Despite the overalls and straw-hat, Farm to Family owner, Mark Lilly is no farmer. The caged farm animals next to the bus are props, just like the outfit. He built F2F getting his products from wherever he can; local coffee roasters, grain millers, meat purveyors. And most of his customers are surely glad to have convenient access to those products. But, what about the Amish grown produce he carts in from pretty far afield of Richmond’s surrounding counties?
Amish farms aren’t part of the organic/natural farming trend. Pesticides and Monsanto seeds are just part of cutting costs and sustaining their anachronistic way of life. (did you think those doughuts where somehow healthy and ‘authentic’ because the girls selling them look like they were plucked right out of Little Women?). No. Of course not. They’re delicious doughnuts. But you get the gist. The nobility of a product is assumed when the sellers do something to trigger one or two of your sympathies.
It’s natural to project altruism on our grocer if they’ve spread their goods out on folding tables in an otherwise obscure parking lot. Of course they’ve gone the extra mile to serve you because they’re literally standing behind their product. But, what if it isn’t their product and the seller is just a disinterested middle-man? Fine, if they’re up front about it. Right? But with so many opportunists jumping on board the eco-green-artisan marketing aesthetic, who the hell knows what you’re being sold these day. Maybe we need market organizers applying some regulations. But are you ready for to find zero Albemarle County apples from Victory Farms? And what will become of the Fritos in Nates Taco Truck’s Frito pie? And where will Blanchards find cheap land to grow enough coffee to keep us caffeinated as we make the rounds at SOTJ? (j/k)
Okay. Don’t let this devolve into hair-splitting grey areas. If the issue is important to you, from a consumer or a provider standpoint, weigh in and let’s see if we can make heads or tails of this issue.
UPDATE: Farm to Family issued a response to this blog and the comments.
It’s about time this was addressed. There is nothing more heart breaking to be a local grower who is losing community support because you are only selling what you grow. If convenience is all you are after then there are some great web companies that can provide that while telling you where your food is coming from (luluslocalfood.com and relayfoods.com). Community Supported Agriculture is just that direct community support for a producer. For many small farms it is the only way they make it. If you are buying a “CSA” share from someone that isn’t growing anything, but only resellng produce and meats they have bought at the lowest price possible you are undermining local farmers. The mark up that makes the Bus, and many others like it, profitable could be the difference between land being used for agriculture and it just becoming another subdivision.
I am all for companies that make selling your produce easier. God knows farmers markets can be expensive and time consuming. Fall Line and Relay are supporting local growers while not competing with them. No farm in RVA can provide the kind of diversity of products that is being demanded of them by unrealistic, artificial CSAs. If you don’t want to take the time to buy from separate vendors then use a co-op, but don’t support a fraud.
This is by far not my forte, but I honestly like the option of buying from local farmers AND from people trucking in local produce. I want that option. 9 times out of 10, I am supporting the local farmers, but my needs would just as well being served buying them at SOTJ than at Kroger.
I just ask for fair advertising. I like that Whole food s lets you know where your food comes from…. Why can’t SOTJ just require a little more signage that explains the source?
I stopped going to the 17th Street Farmer’s Market a long time ago because I kept seeing stickers on the fruits and vegetables saying they had come from Mexico or elsewhere. I couldn’t believe that someone would sell such things in an environment where one would assume that the food is local.
I now buy 70% of my food from South of the James Market or through my Dominion Harvest delivery. Do you think that DH is undermining local farms? I know exactly which farm each good is coming from, they are all from Central Virginia and I pay what I consider just-over-a-fair-price because I assume I’m 1) assuring the farmers make a fair price and 2) paying for the convenience of the middle man and delivery service. Thoughts?
Lastly, I agree that the markets should offer better signage. It would be great to know from the get go if a farm is chemical free since I know it’s hard for small farms to afford the organic certification. However, to answer the overall questions about SOTJ specifically, I don’t mind the decision, but I am curious to see how strict they go with it.
Hills and Heights covered the disappearance of the F2F bus back when it happened last summer. It wasn’t so much a “producer only” issue but a farmers sold items to the bus and then at the market were losing sales to the bus. Personally I think that F2F didn’t give up much of a fight because they wanted to focus on the store as their primary business model. Link to the story: http://goo.gl/44Shu
Interesting discussion and I’m going to post it on H&H.
I just read the H&H post from last year discussion and (based on the comments here) there’s more to the story. Plus, the commenters really seem to miss the one point that Karen made publicly. Farmers sold to the F2F bus so Lilly could make his stops all around town peddling the farmers’ products, not so he could pull up outside the “farmers markets” once per week and intercept the farmers’ customers. That’s not cooperative.
Yes, clearer signage is a great start, I think.
Two other things:
1. Maybe the requirement could be that there’s a certain percentage of what you sell, as a produce vendor, be from your farm. 100% would be tough…but perhaps 60%? 70%? I don’t know the right mix. But this allows us to buy certain produce at the market that none of the locals can or do grow without that produce taking over what they offer if it becomes popular. I’d rather buy something not-local from a small business that is local than from a chain grocery store.
2. I think a distinction should be made between the people selling produce and people selling meals and other immediate-consumption items. Otherwise, as Jason suggested, we’d never have coffee, or doughnuts, or Nate’s Taco Truck, because we’re not exactly a reliable wheat or coffee producing state. And Blanchard’s Coffee isn’t really undermining a farmer in VA by selling beans grown in Ecuador.
I think #1 has its risks – maybe the % of non-own-farm-produce that a vendor sells is the same kind of fruit/veggie that another local farm actually grows. So you still have the potential for farmer A undermined by farmer B selling somebody else’s produce. But if both farmer A and B can only sell a certain % of stuff not grown on their farms, I think that might be a good direction to head.
I’m not an expert on this either, so if anything I said is way off base, forgive me – just my thoughts.
I’m against any kind of extremism. Some places just grow produce better and i don’t mind them getting trucked in as long as there is proper signage. However from mexico or chile – we have enough of those in supermarkets.
And can we please allow vendors to sell soda! So annoyed to drink iced tea with a hotdog sandwich!
This past week at SOTJ, I got “all you can stuff in a bag” greens for $4. They looked like collards, tasted like mustard greens, and the guy taking the money had labeled it “spinich” and said that’s what it was. He didn’t really know what it was cuz he didn’t grow it and probably doesn’t grow anything. Clearly, it wasn’t spinach, but at that price, who cares?
Well, I should. Maybe that stuff was GMO, or covered in chemicals. (I should have pressed for details) No actual farmer at the market could compete with that price without losing money. At any rate, I think you can see from this little example how middle-men and the people who buy from them can devalue the quality and responsibility behind the products we purchase.
Lastly, I bought the mystery greens thinking it was just a quirky transaction (and maybe that’s all it was) without giving it this kind of consideration in the moment. I went to SOTJ with exactly $20 and I got as much as I could out of it, including one of those doughnuts I slandered (for my wife and her sweet tooth). By the way, I made the most amazing kale chips that aren’t kale with those greens. Friends, come over and try my Monsanto Mystery Munchies.
Where can I buy these Monsanto Mystery Munchies? SOTJ next week perhaps?
It’s a dream of mine to have time to distribute my kale chips. Maybe in 2012. Maybe through a few restaurants. I don’t actually want to stand behind a folding table for half a day. And maybe that’s a confounding variable in this whole producer-only analysis. Hmmm…
Jason, I do think many of the farmers hire hourly folks to help sell their wares at markets, so just because this fellow didn’t know what he was selling you, doesn’t mean the food is from monsanto. I have a neighbor that helps out Annie’s on a regular basis at the market. I’m sure, that to be profitable, the farms have to hit more than just one market a weekend thus resulting in hourly workers.
Page, you’re right. I should have gone to greater lengths to poke holes in the definition of farmer as well as the definition of a local product. I honestly get tired just thinking about where to draw the line.
Just commenting on the local versus non-local produce issue…I think signage is key. “Local” is am ambiguous word — Whole Foods labels soap from Baltimore as “local” to the Short Pump store, and to me, that’s not “local” the same way RVA’s Row House Soaps (located behind the Franklin St. library) is local. In in Whole Foods,they can make their call about what is/is not local, and with the signage, I can make mine based on their sign. Perhaps the farmers markets should also implement required signage stating where the produce is actually being trucked in from — perhaps it could be part of the vetting process, in that produce from with X number of miles gets preferential treatment when it comes to spots — like a tier system.
Ah!! Finally!! I wrote a rather scathing diatribe about F2F after working with Mark for several days, but I did it mostly for myself– had to get some things off my chest, the best way for me to do that is to write. I never did anything with it… sad face.
I’m of the sort that is happy to eat “local” when I can, but for me, local doesn’t have to be within 25 miles or 100 miles– for me, local can include anything grown or made in Virginia. That said, particularly when it comes to produce, given the choice between 25 mile local and 100+ mile grown in Virginia local, of course I’d choose the former– putting money into the true local economy as close to the source as possible. However it pains me to say, F2F mostly does try to sell products from VA… MOSTLY. Or at least, used to (mostly) try to do. A year ago, which is when I decided to refused to patronize the business.
My beef with the veggie bus guy has just a little bit to do with where he obtains the wares he peddles and a LOT to do with the misrepresentation and, in some cases, outright LIES he peddles. Yes, he is a middleman, and in some cases he is a middle man for another middle man. (So what would we call that? A Quarterman?) No, contrary to popular belief (and the very words painted on his bus), NOT everything on his bus or in his store is organic. No, he is not an “expert in local food distribution, the slow food movement, marketing, CSA’s and setting up a successful small sustainable business concept” any more than I am an expert on the same for having read some books and attended a few lectures by TRUE experts (Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin).
Come on, who wants to read my diatribe???
Me.
I’m curious as well! At first i really liked the idea of the bus’s mission to take fresh produce to neighborhoods that might not have access to it otherwise. But it sounded like it didn’t end up being a financially viable way to continue, hence the market. But I’ve always had a niggling little problem with the veggie bus– are the lillys really trying for a food revolution or is it a convenient way to increase sales?
It is a business, after all, but seems to rely a lot on volunteers who want it to be the revolution. And I have NO problem with it being a business, just stop using the “revolution” for sales purposes. Does that make sense? It just seems manipulative.
You are absolutely right. His dialogue is food revolution, his actions are decidedly NOT. I once asked Mark, if he was so committed to getting fresh produce to underserved areas (which he says he is, and which is why he got himself set up to take EBT), why did he only park the bus in — pardon the phrase people– yuppie areas that are already pretty well served? (Westover Hills, Ellwood’s, myriad places around the Fan, etc.) His response? “Well it is a for-profit business.” Mmmm hmmm. How well I know!!
I don’t know what/where the best place to post the whole story might be… it’s kind of long?
I guarantee there have been longer comments on this site. Post it here. Who knows, maybe another blogger or media person will republish it, or excerpt it.
Simply put, I think moving to a producer-only market is a bad idea. While vendors like F2F and a few others are practicing a deception by not acknowledging the structure of their businesses, such vendors are easy to restrict. Victory Farms and Faith Farms have both been very clear where items they have not grown or produced were sourced. Other vendors are clear about where their farms are. Require all vendors to have adequate signage and transparency, and we all win.
When I moved here seven years ago, I was more than a little disappointed by the lack of markets, but the arrival and success of SOTJ meant I could focus here. Supplementing SOTJ with the Byrd House Market has become my seasonal routine. Ultimately, I fear that micro- and mis-management threaten to diminish some of the best things that have happened to RVA once more.
Ok, I try to buy as local as I can, and local, to me, is as local as I frickin’ can. I have kids. Young, school-aged kids. They do normal, school-aged kid things i.e. Sports, school, homework, friends. I live in Mechanicsville and by golly, you bet I support F2F. Also, with said-kids, husband, and always something planned on Saturdays, do I want to make the trek to SOTJ? Not every Saturday. Absolutely not. Can I jet up the road to buy fresh and as local as I can? Yes, I can. And F2F makes that possible for this Mechanicsville busy gal. I enjoy any market that helps bring “local” food to the forefront. I do what I can. SOTJ has gotten large. It’s their business to do with what they want. If you don’t agree with it, or like it, I guess you need to make friends with some more farmers so you know whose doors to knock on for your food. Farming is just as much a business as a building that sells produce is. It’s all a matter of doing what YOU personally can and how that business appeals to you.
Right– but how do you feel about buying potatoes at the F2F market that were actually grown in California or Canada and NOT Virginia? When you buy something as close to the source as possible, many many MANY more dollars are being put back into the local economy. I get that you’re busy and it’s great that you want to eat as local as you frickin’ can (that is such an underused word!!) –but I think that this entire discussion is about people learning or understanding that, in spite of their best efforts, they aren’t always getting what they are paying for.
Hahaha! I frickin’ know, right? Ok, ok, ok, I took that one too far. I totally agree that if I intend to buy local, then it should be. I am not versed enough in the farmer lingo and I kind of always expected that if I see a Virginia Farm Sign at the SOTJ, and I see a product, then I assume it is grown there. Probably my own naiveness. If I was back in Dallas or Houston, I would definitely be more watchful and aware. Furthermore, most of what F2F sells is from Virginia. I guess I need to be more quizative on all fronts when buying produce.
Or “inquisative…” Whatever works.
I used to live out in the country where we, ironically, had a rather paltry farmers market. One of my friends would travel a few counties over to bring apples and peaches from the orchards so that we’d have them available. (No one else at our market had those.) Yet a few people balked because they weren’t grown by her in our county.
Her act of being a middleman provided a service to those of us in her community. It also provided her with a supplemental wage.
When you force a market to become producer-only, you inevitably hurt the really small farms. If an individual or a couple has a small farm, there are only so many hours they can devote to farmers markets without hurting their actual farming. (You need time to grow your harvest in addition to traveling to and from markets and sitting outside vending for hours.) Some farms are big enough to have additional employees, and that gives them the ability to have someone at the market while someone else is back working the farm. But sometimes the super-small farmer needs to be able to let their friend bring the produce to market for them.
At the risk of making myself unpopular, I’m going to say it: I’ve got beef with the Veggie Bus guy.
Don’t get me wrong. I think what he’s trying to do is great, and I love the idea that anyone with the time and means can buy (or salvage) a bus and start a program in their own area. My ‘beef’ lies in the disconnect between principal and practice. I think that consumers have a right to make informed decisions, to know what they are buying, and to not be misled. I was all about getting on the bus, Gus… until I did. And then I was sad– and a little bit mad.
According to Mark Lilly’s (self-penned) Huffington Post blog entry entitled ‘Beginning,’ he has “created a perfect local, sustainable food distribution system that can penetrate any demographic area in any city or town with nutritious, tasty, organic, local food.” He goes on to say that he “[sources] local products from family, friends or anyone that grows clean food within a 150-mile radius of where I am located in Richmond, VA. I build relationships with local farmers, drive to their farm, load up the bus, and then distribute it into the urban landscape through set routes.” Although his straw-hat persona suggests otherwise, Mark is primarily peddles wares grown by others. I have no problem with Virginia farmers needing middlemen to get their goods to market so that they can keep running the farm. In fact, it’s a darn good idea… if only the execution matched the ideals.
The Farm to Family website states that “[Mark] is an expert in local food distribution, the slow food movement, marketing, CSA’s and setting up a successful small sustainable business concept.” I guess, in the same way that a person whose dog has had a littler of puppies might consider themselves a ‘dog breeder,’ he might be an expert. In which case, I’m an expert, too. I’ve read several books on the subject and I follow the ‘slow-food’ movement in the news and blogosphere and Twitterverse. I have also taken graduate and undergraduate courses in Natural Resources, Food Science, and Agriculture in which sustainability, the collapse of the global food chain, and alternatives to industrial farming practices were discussed ad nauseum. But I don’t go around calling myself an expert, because I’m not. I’m just a person with a strong interest in a subject who tries to educate themselves as much as possible. Mark has a bachelors degree in Fine Arts from VCU and took some courses for a Disaster Science degree at the University of Richmond — a degree which he did not finish. Now, I could care less that a person started taking courses and, for whatever reason(s), decided not to finish a program– but you do NOT get to call yourself an expert for so doing.
I rode with Mark in mid-April on one of his weekly runs to the Shenandoah Valley. We hit up the Shenandoah Valley Produce Auction in Dayton, VA, where he purchased rhubarb, strawberries, bean sprouts, asparagus, tomatoes, lettuce, watercress, herbs, and some flowers. Much of the produce up for auction was brought to market by large-scale Mennonite farmers– but some of it was also trucked in by other distributors from parts unknown. I watched Mark bidding because I was curious, once I saw how the auction worked, how he knew where the stuff he was buying came from. When I questioned this he said “Oh, I ask.” Well, maybe he does ask sometimes– but he did not ask that day.
Organic is a word thrown around a bunch in Farm to Family marketing, interviews, and blogs. On the side of the bus, Mark painted “How food secure is your family? Eat at home, cook, have fun! Don’t rely on a failing highly processed unsustainable TOXIC food system!” Toxic? Wow. Toxic implies chemicals. Food grown without chemicals (synthetic fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides) is organic. So, everything on the bus must be organic, because otherwise, it would be toxic—grown with chemicals. Right?
Some of the asparagus purchased at the produce auction was both organic and local (to the Valley, grown in greenhouses… obviously, since it was April, in the Shenendoah Valley. I am definitely saying that with my best “in a van down by the RIVER” Chris Farley voice.); I schlepped boxes and helped pack the trailer, and the word ‘organic’ was absent from all but three boxes of asparagus. Given that slapping an organic label food generally gives it a premium price, you would expect that farmers and growers who put in the time and effort to raise said produce would make sure it was marketed and labeled as such. I chatted up one of the pleasant Mennonite women whose organic asparagus Mark had purchased– I have family from those parts, and as it turns out, my first bicycle came from her cousin’s shop. Small world. I digress. Anywho, she was telling me that they, the Mennonite farmers, don’t really see a profit on the organic produce, and therefore they don’t grow much of it. Most everything else was local, to my knowledge—lettuce and asparagus, for certain, were grown in Dayton. Strawberries came from Moseley, VA. But the potatoes? They either came from California or were packed in boxes that once held potatoes that came from California. (Potatoes? In April? IN THE VALLEY? Who knows. Stranger things have happened.)
We left the produce auction and headed to another part of the Valley (Fairfield, to be precise) to pick up the dairy items for his CSA customers—milk, yogurt, butter, and a soft pepper cheese spread. From there we motored on to Wade’s Mill in Raphine (for grits) and finally to Crown Orchard Company in Covesville to pick up some apples—delicious, juicy apples, so juicy I almost needed a bib.
Wait!! Apples, grown in Virginia? In APRIL?? Ok, I don’t have the full scoop on the ‘taters, but the lukewarm news for the hard-core followers of the local food movement is that the Crown Orchard Company apples that are being peddled by F2F are ‘local’ (to Virginia); they were simply harvested last fall. Apples are often held in controlled atmosphere environments in which oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are maintained at optimum levels to delay the ripening/rotting process. I spoke with the company directly; Crown Orchard’s apples are held in 2% oxygen environment. Organic, however, they are not. Mr. Chiles said that “no sprays were used” (and I am assuming that by sprays he means pesticides) but that they were not ‘fully’ organic. Meaning, probably, a lot of synthetic fertilizers. What’s that about clean food?
Why am I writing this? I certainly do not want to put the bus out of business. I share the same food principles and values as Mark claims to. I just think it is lame that people aren’t necessarily buying what they think they are buying in the same way I think it is lame that skate meat sometimes gets passed off as scallops. I have a feeling that people would flock to the bus (and now, to the Market) regardless of whether the produce was local or organic. It’s a novelty, a fun place to shop. The produce, for the most part, is fresher than you will find in the grocery store, and by buying from Mark, you are supporting local (Virginia) businesses. It is certainly more convenient than making the rounds yourself, and Mark will even bring the bus to YOU, like he did during Snowmageddon. However, people have the right to be informed, to know that not everything they are buying is organic and to choose to buy or not buy based off of their own food principles and needs. And currently, the news, hype, and marketing practices of Farm to Family does (do?) not convey that fact.
To be fair, with regard to the labeling of produce on the bus, it’s not as though he is putting in writing, “these are local organic apples, this is local organic asparagus, these are local organic potatoes,” etc. But it is very much implied. Certainly, for the processed/packaged items sold on the bus (cider, honey, syrup, flour, grits and other grain products, etc.) people can read and see for themselves whether it is organic or not and whence it comes.
Finally, I take particular issue with the milk that was, at the time I worked with Mark and wrote this article, provided for CSA members and available for purchase on the bus. Labeled and marketed as “Meow Milk,” it said right on the label “Not for human consumption.” On Facebook, a CSA customer wrote on Farm to Family’s wall and asked about this. She said something along the lines of (forgive me for being too lazy to go back to 2009 and find the exact wording on this one!) ‘My milk says not for human consumption, should I be concerned or are they just re-using containers?’ Mark replied “It is fine, don’t worry about it.”
What he didn’t tell her was that the milk was thusly labeled because the dairy does not have a license to sell milk for human consumption.
WHAT??? No sir. NO. You do NOT get to make that choice for people!! Does he know the sort of sanitation conditions necessary for producing safe-to-drink milk? Can he assure anyone that those standards are being upheld in a facility with zero oversight? Does he know the kind of sick people can get from drinking bad milk– especially children and seniors?? And if that alone weren’t enough, on the farm’s website, it states that “All of our farmstead cheeses are made using raw milk from our dairy herd, cultures, rennet, sea salt as well as various herbs, spices, and peppers.” Raw milk?? Don’t get me wrong, it’s delicious– but I’m sorry, did this farm really invest in the infrastructure necessary for pasturizing milk that they aren’t allowed to sell?? That, I don’t have the answer to.Was he, or was he not, peddling raw milk? I probably wouldn’t get a straight answer if I called the dairy directly, because they were not supposed to be distributing milk in the first place. I certainly wouldn’t get a straight answer from Mark because he didn’t feel that his CSA customer deserved one.
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I do not patronize the Farm to Family bus or market– because I do not tolerate such misrepresentations that border on outright lies. The fact that he put himself out there at the markets in direct competition with producers from whom he obtained his goods is just further proof, to me, that his business practices and my values system are not aligned.
Mark’s Huffington Post Blog, ‘Beginning’ entry
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-lilly/farm-to-family-beginning_b_554208.html
Info about the Apples:
For more information, see the Washington State University Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center publication “Controlled Atmosphere Storage of Apples and Pears” available at http://postharvest.tfrec.wsu.edu/EMK2001D.pdf
Farm to Family website:
http://thefarmbus.com/
Dang. Mennonites. I had it as Amish in my story (I blame the doughnuts). Of course, that’s one of my blog’s smallest shortcomings in comparison to this potent analysis. Thank you, Alicia.
I know the Amish comment is trite, but I do have to stick up for them: like *any* farmer, they are making their own decisions, so before you pass them all off as GMO lovers and dismiss their way of life (which, by the way, they are homesteading more affordably and sustainably than the writer so why knock it) – “Amish farms aren’t part of the organic/natural farming trend. Pesticides and Monsanto seeds are just part of cutting costs and sustaining their anachronistic way of life.”
Know my Amish neighbors here in Virginia are educated in organic/natural advantages over GMO and farm accordingly, before you dismiss an entire community / culture.
Ok, I need to weigh in here. I have been buying almost all of my food through SOTJ and Fall line Farms for several years now, and have cultivated a strong relationship with Faith Farms. I have their CSA, and get most of my meat through them. I found out this week that they have been kicked out of the market because they offer some items (cheese, butter, a few veggies) that are not produced by them. Now, I get that the market wants to be “producer only”, but kicking Faith Farm out is ridiculous! Nobody buys from them just for that cheese. They buy their meat, all of which is from their farm. I am pretty sure that this “purist” move just nailed shut the coffin of the winter market. There were days last winter when it was COLD and I did not want to go to the market. You know what got me there? I needed eggs, and I had a CSA with Faith Farm, so I needed to go to them for my eggs. When I was there, I bought from other vendors. I am pretty sure that most of the other people there on those frigid mornings were in the same boat as me. I suspect that there will be more vendors than customers this winter.
Hate to see Faith Farm go. Since they didn’t choose to stay and sell only their own meat, I’m assuming they needed the extra sales from the butter. If that butter was from elsewhere in Virginia, I’d have been happy buying it (and maybe I have been, since I don’t know which producer it’s from. I was also happy buying Faith Farms breakfast sausage and knowing it didn’t come from unhappy factory-dwelling pigs that make me cry. Now I can’t buy that sausage, and the market has a bit less to offer for me – both butter and sausage.
I will support other meat vendors if they’re there, but I’d like to see something like a 60% rule, or a Virginia-only rule. A farmer bringing another farmer’s products to market with their permission doesn’t sound like a middleman to me, it sounds more like a co-op. I think cooperation and creative business models are important to making sustainable agriculture profitable in the modern world with food policy stacked against it. I support some method of keeping out wholesale produce from around the world, but I don’t think producer-only is the best method.
Faith Farm did not choose to leave the market. They were going to comply with the new rules, but the Market Umbrella kicked them out anyway. I am now going to the Byrd House market on Tuesdays to get me meat from Faith Farm. I don’t plan to attend South of the James anymore.
As a farmers’ mkt shopper since 2000, from when 17th St was the only option, and a CSA member for 8 yrs (with Amy’s Garden), I get why “growers market” policy was adopted by the Market Umbrella: to weed out resellers or grocers like F2F bus. BUT, “growers only market” does not solve all the “mystery” for consumers who think everything at the markets are organic and local. For that, get to know your farmers and ask questions whether the farmers practice organic, transitional or conventional farming practices.
“Growers only” kills (at least, kicks out) the small farms that do not have enough resources (notably paid/volunteer labor) to work both the farm and the market stall. Co-ops like Faith Farms, Byrd Farm/Rural VA Markets allow small farms to be able to continue focusing on their farms, while able to sell their produce direct to consumers for higher price than they’d normally get for wholesaling to Ellwood, Whole Foods, etc.
The blanket “growers only” hurt not only the local/smaller farms, but also us, the consumers. I missed the peaches from Thistledown Farms because they got them from neighboring farm. This year’s peach vendor at SOTJ, while offering tasty peaches, was not so forth-coming on their farming practice when I inquired. I assumed it was conventional; the girl I talked to dodge my question about “low-spraying” their peaches. Likewise, Victory Farms couldn’t sell those wonderful, low-spray peaches and apples from Henley’s Orchards to non-CSA members. They probably won’t be able to sell Henley’s fruit at all next year, I think this year an exception was made to them to sell the fruit only to CSA members because they already committed that option to CSA members.
I wish the Market Umbrella would not choose this cut-throat approach on its insistence to “growers only”, but rather, spend more time on enforcing clear labeling whether certain produce is local, organic, natural, non-GMO, or conventional. It should screen the farmer applicants on making sure they are local (and how local 50, 100, 150 miles?), the produce from neighboring farms that’s brought along should be labeled clearly as well.
Let the consumers choose for ourselves who we want to support, but do equip us with the necessary tools/labels to make the best decisions.
EllieB-
I feel the need to clarify a couple things that you touched upon. Firstly, the producer only requirement at SOJ does not mean that a farm can’t hire someone to work thier stand. What it doesn’t allow is people to buy produce from their “neighbor” and resell it for thier own profit. Which brings us to….
…What the definition of a neighbor is. You mention Thistledown Farms and their peaches. You could buy the same peaches that Thistledown used to carry all season- from Saunder’s Brothers. Thistledown bought their peaches from Saunders Bros and then resold them.
Having a producer only mandate does not hurt the consumer. When the reselling of peaches was put to a stop, the void that created was instantly filled by the actual growers. Most customers probably didn’t even notice. The producer only mandate helps the farmers too. They don’t have to compete with someone showing up with produce that they bought at a wholesale house or auction, produce that sometimes comes from hundreds of miles away, and is almost always heavily sprayed.
And I’m going to finish this with a little something about faith farm. Every now and then faith farm does an open house at their farm. If you go, take note of the number of animals they have, and then think about the amount of meat they bring to the market.
dot dot dot, thanks for your clarification. Obviously you know more about the behind-the-scene at the farms and the reasons and benefits of Market Umbrella’s decision to push Growers Only policy. Thanks for the tip that the Thistledown peaches were Saunders Bros, I don’t miss them that much anymore now.
This illustrates the need for Mkt Umbrella to police the vendors’ honesty for us consumers _ thanks Mkt Umbrella! because when I first asked Thistledown about the peaches (at Byrd House Mkt), I was told “from a farm down the street from us.” Caveat emptor, I failed to ask further questions.
My turn to clarify my statement “Growers only” kills (at least, kicks out) the small farms that do not have enough resources (notably paid/volunteer labor) to work both the farm and the market stall.
I understand the policy is not about forbidding hiring the farm stand worker.
I was referring to, what’s the term? Farmers’ Co-op?
I’m thinking of Rural VA Market-type, yes Faith Farms, or even Victory Farms’ low-spray apples and peaches from Henley’s Orchards.
As a customer, I don’t understand why – using those three vendors, they are told not to sell the products they don’t raise/grow themselves, rather than requiring them to disclose the origins in the first place, and restrict the mile-source to a certain radius. These three vendors I’m familiar with and buy from them. Whenever I asked where a certain product is from, the answers were straight forward and honest. Faith Farms told me the Amish butter was from Ohio, or Iowa – I can’t remember – and she’re fine, in her own grumpy way
, that I chose not to buy it. I was a bit taken back that they buy all the way from the Midwest rather than somewhere in VA or even PA (closer than OH/IA), and did wonder if the market manager knew that.
Perhaps, Faith Farms can be persuaded to source from VA meat and dairy farmers, rather than shut-out, and help the smaller farms grow?
I lamented the impending loss of access to Henley’s Orchards, though. They are a bigger family-operated orchard, so if they want to, they can hire someone to open their own stall at SOTJ I’m sure, but imagine if the fruit were from some smaller orchard in Nelson/Madison County, just far enough to drive to for a weekly quart of apples, and they rely on Victory Farms or whichever other farm already in Richmond Farmers’ Mkt to sell half of their harvest. What then?
I feel that responsible farmers like Victory Farms, or Farm Co-op like Rural VA Mkt, already worked out a fair wholesale and retail prices that’s better than wholesaling to Whole Foods or Relay Foods. Plus, from customers stand point, I appreciate the convenience of getting all I need in one Farmers’ Mkt and not having to stop by the stores or another farmers’ mkt on the way home.
That’s my perspective as a customer.
For a writer who stinks at writing to make fun of an outfit like Farm to Family is a joke. First of all the writer is completely uninformed, to complain about non organics being sold in a retail location is laughable. I’d like to start, as a local grower, to say that the biggest problem with growing produce is finding a seller. Farmers markets are great as long as the planets align to make delivery perfect for a Saturday, but as I’m sure the ignorant writer knows, we are usually really busy on the nice sunny days and having a retail point like Farm to Family, who will buy anything grown local anytime, is a great recourse. I care about the environment, so I would never be an organic grower. I don’t think you should till the ground up constantly and create massive amounts of erosion just to control weeds. Most of us don’t really care where our seeds come from unless we’re growing heirlooms so to complain about Monsanto seeds is just more diatribe from someone who watched Food Inc too many times. Farm to Family is only three years old, Mark and Suzi work very hard to provide a service that no one else does. Mark literally drives to local farms and brings produce back to Richmond. The writer should focus more on slavery practices used at “organic” farms than on two hard working people that give Richmond a seven days a week farmers market.