Is It Really A Farmers Market?
Farmers markets are an important element in the food industry because they offer a food shopping experience that a grocery store cannot provide. At farmers markets, fresh, in-season produce satiates the open area and there is a direct, social link between the farmer and consumer. What better way for us to interact with one another than over the common bonding of food?
When you enter the doors of the Food Lion on Western or even the Trader Joe’s in North Raleigh, you can’t ask questions about how the food was grown or where it comes from. There are so many far removed steps between when the produce was first harvested and when it shows up at the grocery store, and you have no clue what chemicals were used to keep it “fresh” during transportation or how many miles it traveled before landing in your grocery cart.
At farmers markets, we know that the produce grown on a farmer’s land not too far from our own home. We know that the farmer treated his animals and crops with the best possible treatment, and we have no fear or doubts of the origins of where our food came from.
However, recent investigations in California are questioning the validity of the freshness and certainty of the origins of where the produce comes from at farmers markets in the Sunshine state. California’s governor signed a bill authorizing about a million dollars to root out farmers market fraud.
It was called to the government’s attention that some of the farmers at the markets were fabricating the truth about their produce. In 2013, 20 vendors in Los Angeles County were fined. San Diego sanctioned five vendors and more cases in Southern California are still pending. If the vendors are proven guilty of violating state laws, they can face fines up to $1,000 for each offense. For serious or repeated violations, producers can also be suspended from farmers markets for up to 18 months.
A task force of inspectors have been deployed to farmers markets around the state and are trained to look out for market scammers’ tricks, like produce that gives off a commercial appearance. This includes produce that has a waxy coat or produce that is uniformly sized.
If this is what’s happening in California, Green Undergrads became curious if this was a trend that was happening on the East Coast, particularly at two prominent farmers markets in the Triangle: the Durham Farmer’s Market & the Raleigh Farmer’s Market.
Durham Farmer’s Market
The Durham Farmers market really seems to be a home grown, local effort, to provide its customers with the freshest and most local produce available. Since it opened in 1998, the market has grown by the help of the community who saw the benefit of locally produced, seasonal produce, artisanal foods, and crafts. Only farmers can participate in the Durham farmer’s market. It is strictly a producer only organization. With 77 certified vendors, The Durham Farmer’s market ensures that each vendor is selling only what they personally produced on their own farm.
The farmers market is open year round but only on Saturdays from 8am-noon, and on some select Wednesday evenings from 3:30pm-6:30pm. The Wednesday option ran through late October. After Thanksgiving, the Saturday hours will switch from 10am- noon.
While the hours of the Durham Farmers Market seem limited when compared to the hours of operation of the Raleigh Farmers market, they begin to make sense when you understand that every single vendor has produced the food they are selling. It would be nearly impossible for farmers to operate a stand more than once a week and maintain production on their farms.
When you first walk into the Durham Farmers market, you can be guaranteed that everything in the vicinity has been produced within 70 miles of Durham, and oftentimes is even closer. Any given farmer will normally harvest the produce they are selling within 24 hours of the market, offering consumers the freshest ingredients.
Because these farmers don’t have the same concerns as Grocery stores, they can plant multiple varieties of the same vegetable, and focus on the flavors of their produce. Grocery store produce sometimes has to travel over 1,500 miles before arriving to its destination. As a result, grocery stores select product that is long-lasting, which causes them to give up some taste elements.
Because Durham has a producer-only farmers market, you are guaranteed that all the produce is within season in North Carolina, and is the best quality available. Buying at the farmer’s market eliminates the need for middlemen, and puts the most money into the hands of the local family farmers. While the industry favors huge farming operations, by supporting your local farmers you can eat seasonally and buy very specific and delicious ingredients. The farmers are also more than happy to answer any questions you may have about the food and their production methods. They take pride in their work, and want to share it with consumers. Our group was lucky enough to speak with one specific farmer, Mr. Lee Harrison of Harrison Farms in Goldsboro, NC.
Goldsboro is a farming community with rich land used mostly on fruits and vegetables. While many farmers in our state focus on large row cash crops like corn and soybeans, the Harrison’s prefer to be more selective with the crops they produce. This, in part, has been the reason Mr. Harrison has done so well financially. Instead of cutting corners, Lee is tedious in selecting the very best fruit to provide at his stand.
More importantly, Lee Harrison had a bone to pick with the Raleigh Farmer’s Market. Mr. Harrison believes that the Durham Farmer’s Market is authentic and truly supports the recent effort by many North Carolina citizens to eat locally grown food and help re-establish the respect for NC Agriculture.
“Those guys over in Raleigh, some of them are real, I can admit that. But some of them, man, they just run down to the local grocery, buy up their allotment of bananas, run them out there and sell them as if they had anything to do with the production of those bananas. Man, it’s just a shame,” Harrison remarks. “I work hard to make a living. I could ditch all this hard work and just grow corn and live a wealthy life. But that ain’t the point. It’s about providing North Carolina produce to North Carolina people. This is a blue collar state. I intend to keep it that way.”
Lee Harrison’s strong words certainly shed light on the corruption that has begun to integrate itself in many local farmers market. People are learning to take advantage of those who don’t mind paying a few extra cent for locally-grown, fresh produce.
In an effort to raise support for similarly structured farmers markets, the Durham Farmer’s market webpages has links to high quality markets within the region. After looking through these similar markets, they all seem to have similar operation hours and expectations of their vendors. I noticed on farmer’s market that didn’t quite make the cut: The Raleigh Farmer Market.
Raleigh Farmers Market
The Raleigh Farmers market is open seven days a week. On Sundays, it is open 10 hours and Monday-Saturday, it is open for 13 hours. With such intense hours of operation, how can farmers afford to run a stall and sell their produce while also maintaining operations back on the farm?
We spoke to two different women who told us how their respective farms managed keeping up the business and farming aspects. At Lee’s Produce, the head farmer hired two women from his church to transport produce from the farm to the Farmer’s Market every day.
At Cox Farms, we spoke to Mrs. Cox, the wife of the head farmer, Mr. Cox. She explained to us that she was in charge of the money and the profits while her husband governed the farm.
The Raleigh’s farmers market is also quite large. There are five separate buildings for selling various types of merchandise and three restaurants.
- In the Farmers Building, you can find fresh fruits, vegetables and plants year-round.
2. Market Shoppes is an indoor building that sells meats, cheeses, crafts, bakery items, custom picture framing, N.C. wines, old-fashioned candies, N.C. gifts, soaps and lotions. A market grill is also located in this building.
3. At the Truckers Building, you can take advantage of purchasing produce in bulk from North Carolina and around the world.
4. The Wholesale Terminal is where most of the produce in the Triangle area is bought, which supplies grocery stores, restaurants and institutions in the area.
5. At Market Imports, you can enjoy two acres chalked full of architectural elements, fountains, pots, trellises, water features, furniture, ironwork, stone, teak, pottery and other items from around the world.
The three restaurants are the Market Grill, Seafood Restaurant and State Farmers Market Restaurant.
There are a set of rules and guidelines that vendors at the Raleigh Farmers Market are expected to follow. The rules span from fees that must be paid, to conduct farmers must uphold while selling, to produce quality. Vendors must pay rent for their stand which includes a number of fees for a 200 sq/ft booth that adds up to about $1,500 per month. Farmers are not allowed to sell produce that is “unsound or unwholesome” meaning that it should not be going bad. Farmers must be honest with their customers about their practices as stated in the “Deceptive Practices” clause. Inspections may be enacted by the Farmers Market if they have any reason to believe that these standards are not being upheld.
The guidelines are more specific to the actual farming standards that must be upheld by the vendors, and are stated more like rules than “guidelines”. Plant selling is stricter than produce selling, as 100 percent of the plants sold must have been grown by the seller. There are three types of produce sellers at the Farmers Market: Produce Grower-Seller, Produce Grower-Buyer-Seller, and the Produce-Grower-Designated Seller. The Produce Grower-Seller sells produce that was grown on land that they or their immediate family own. The Produce Grower-Buyer-Seller offers produce grown on land that they or their family own, in addition to selling produce that they purchased from other certified NC farmers. However, at least half of the produce that they sell at one time must have been produced on their land. The Produce-Grower-Designated Seller only sells produce grown on their land, but they have a designated seller that is not immediate family.
These rules and guidelines make it clear that while most of the produce grown on the land of the farm indicated must come from there, it may come from other places in North Carolina as well. However, farmers must be honest about where the produce is coming from. People in the community become concerned about the legitimacy of the farmers market when they find out that their purchases may not have come from the farm that they thought, or if they find out that they could have bought that same product at the grocery store.
Farmers purchasing produce from wholesalers such as Walmart or a grocery store is a problem that many Farmers Markets have. It may be difficult for the farmer to sell as much produce as they need to if something goes wrong on the farm, so people worry that they might try to make up for it by buying produce elsewhere and selling it for more.
While we did not find anyone at the Raleigh Farmers Market that would admit to purely selling only produce bought from other producers, we did meet a Produce Grower-Buyer-Seller, who was also a Produce Grower-Designated Seller. This man was a family friend of the farmer at L and G Farms, and admitted that their apples were bought from Asheville and were not grown on their land. At first, we were very skeptical of the information he gave us because he was very short and defensive. After reading the guidelines, however, it would be legal for him to sell produce that he did not sell, but whether or not the remainder of his produce was grown at L and G Farms is hard to say.
Mrs. Cox, the woman that we spoke to from Cox Farms, was very honest about her own products as well as the products of others at the Raleigh Farmers market. Mrs. Cox owns their farm with her husband Mr. Cox. Her husband is the head farmer at Cox Farms, and has other men to help him. Mrs. Cox runs the business side, and has friends help her sell the produce at her stand. Mrs. Cox sells at the Farmers Market year-round. When they do not have produce to sell in the winter, she sells eggs that come from their chickens on the farm, which are free roaming. At the Cox Farms stand, there are many pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Cox with their chickens and produce on the farm, which makes them easier to trust because buyers can see exactly where the products are coming from.
Mrs. Cox told us that while they are a very trustworthy farm to purchase from as they produce all of their own goods, not all of the “farmers” selling at the market are like them. She pointed out many other stands at the market that she believed were not honest about where their products were coming from. She told us that while farms like her own are inspected, she did not think that their farms were given the attention that they should be by the Famers Market Regulators. This goes to show that while the farmers at the market may appear to be following the rules, they are not all what they seem.
The Raleigh Farmers Market is a munch bigger operation and offers many different opportunities to engage with locally produced food and even the option to dine in three different restaurants. One could compare going to the Raleigh Farmers Market as like an extension of the NC State fair, big infrastructure, a variety of vendors, and big designated structure designated just for the farmers. While many people argue about the nature of the Raleigh Farmers Market, one could not get the same experience from buying produce in a grocery store. While we can’t assure you that every single vendor is legitimate, the women at Cox farms convinced us that there still are some good, quality farmers who are providing the best local produce available to the Raleigh community.
So…
How can we determine if a “farmers market” is a farmer’s market? It is sometimes hard to wade through all the different facts and figures and stories being thrown out. How can you be sure the produce you are buying is seasonal and local. In our opinion, most Farmers Markets are indeed markets for farmers. The likelihood of running into a farmer in the grocery store is nowhere near as likely as running into him at the local market. But before you venture out to the market, do some research, determine what market you feel best fits what you are looking for. Although one may think one type of market is better than another, one can find hardworking farmers at pretty much any farmers market. The Durham Farmers Market has a very strict regulatory process and promises its customers the freshest, most local, and seasonal produce available. Raleigh Farmers Market offers an entire experience as well as local (but not as local as Durham’s) produce. You have to judge for yourself, try a a couple samples along the way, and decide which kind of farmers market tosses your salad.
