National Farmers Market Week: Why the Feds Should Support Family Farms

National Farmers Market Week: Why the Feds Should Support Family Farms

August 12th, 2011
By Elliott Negin


In case you missed the announcement, this week is National Farmers Market Week. No matter. If you shop regularly at one of the more than 7,000 markets across the country, every week is farmers market week. That’s true in my neighborhood, where FreshFarm Markets started the first producer-only farmers market in Washington, D.C., 14 years ago.

When I relocated to D.C. from New York, I had no idea I was moving to a food desert. Although Dupont Circle wasn’t poor by any means, we had limited access to healthy, fresh food. There was one small supermarket we called the “Soviet” Safeway because there were usually long lines and nothing on the shelves. The produce there was pitiful: The tomatoes, picked green and reddened with ethylene gas, could break your teeth.

FreshFarm came to the rescue in 1997 with 15 small, family farms hawking fruit, vegetables and flowers on Sundays from early July to mid-November. That first season attracted 21,000 customers. Today, the market boasts 42 stands selling fruit, vegetables, meat, cheese, eggs, seafood, baked goods, flowers and plants every Sunday all year round. Last year it drew some 162,000 shoppers.

But that’s not all. Over the last decade, FreshFarm, a nonprofit spun off from American Farmland Trust in 2002, set up 10 other one-day-a-week markets in the region, which collectively attracted more than 350,000 customers last year. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2011/08/12/national-farmers-market-week-why-the-feds-should-support-family-farms/

as community support. Farmers' markets are working very well to provide a direct way for small farms to sell their products while avoiding the high cost of commercial distribution. Here in the Twin Cities in MN, they're very successful and very well supported by the community. They grow every year, and the number of small farmers who are using them in increasing.

I'm not sure what Federal support would add to that, other than another level of regulation and annoying paperwork.

nt

involved in small family farms that sell through farmers' markets is more likely to produce problems than solutions, I think. Government loves paperwork and complexity. Small farmers don't need any more of that, I think. I'm speaking from the perspective of the son of a long-term family ownership of a small citrus and avocado farm in California.

Benign neglect is probably the best way the government can help small farmers. Let them grow and sell their products without any more interference than is absolutely necessary. If that type of farming is successful, financially, it will grow and thrive on its own, as it seems to be doing in my area.