Re: FRom community garden to farmers market?

**Steve Smoot s*@juno.com**

Hi Cordalie,

Some farmers' markets are not likely to be welcoming to a community
garden's proposal to sell produce. I recall that this was a problem in
Boston and likely, elsewhere.

As Adam points out, it will be difficult to compete with a truck farm but
a lot of the vendors at a farmers' market aren't large farms and are most
often a family farmer trying to make a living.

The perspective towards a potential community garden vendor may well be
that the gardeners don't need to make a profit and the garden production
is a highly subsidized operation.

I'm NOT saying that this is a justifiable attitude, just that you should
be prepared for it. One thing you should not do, if you are admitted as a
vendor, is to undercut the prices of the market farmers. The US is losing
over 20% of its farmers each decade and some of these folks are taking
this approach of direct marketing as a last resort. They are not only
growing and harvesting their produce but processing, transporting, and
selling it. If successful, small farms can be an important part of local
food security. But, it is a long, difficult row to hoe. 

Steve Smoot, Secretary
Spokane Farmers' Market Association
P.O. Box 7424
Spokane, WA 99207
spokanefarmersmarket.org
steveshome@juno.com

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 12:00:15 -0600 community_garden-admin@mallorn.com
writes:

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:56:05 -0500
From: cordalie benoit <cordalie_benoit@snet.net>
Subject: [cg] FRom community garden to farmers market?

We in New Haven, CT are lucky enough to almost 50 community  gardens.  
We are hoping to bring some of our production to local famers' markets.  
Has anyone out there done this?   We were thinking of a combination of 
profit return to the parent organization for a try at sustainability and 
maybe some return to our gardeners for there own efforts.  What rules 
might you have?  And so on?  Thank you, Cordalie

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