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The Ripe Stuff

Besides giving you the chance to buy the freshest, tastiest fruits and vegetables anywhere, America's booming crop of farmers' markets are preserving open space, protecting drinking water, and saving small farms.

By Mary-Powel Thomas

 

At the Hollywood Farmers' Market, in Los Angeles, the great-granddaughter of “the Cattle Queen of Montana” sells grass-fed bison, which she raises without hormones or antibiotics. At the Mississippi Farmers' Market, in the state capital of Jackson, a man from the Mendenhall Bible Church Farm sells pesticide-free tomatoes, corn, squash, peppers, and greens. At the East New York Farmers' Market, in Brooklyn, a woman sells herbs she has raised in her nearby backyard, teaching the young mothers who buy them how to flavor their cooking with sage or lemon thyme rather than salt. And at the Union Square farmers' market, also in New York City, a man sells raw honey made from bees that he keeps on nearby rooftops.

While farmers' markets still account for only 2 percent of the fresh produce sold in the United States, they are a billion-dollar-a-year business and keep sprouting up across the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture counted 1,755 markets in 1994, its first official tally. By 2004 the number had more than doubled, to 3,706. Today every state in the union has them, and the District of Columbia boasts 23, including one at the USDA building on the Washington Mall. Even in rural areas, farmers' markets are increasing, says Charlie Touchette, who runs the North American Farmers' Direct Marketing Association. “Markets really clicked in the late '90s and 2000s. It's driven by consumer demand for local products, and at the same time by more and more small farmers who recognize that selling direct to the public is a better way to make a living than the other options in agriculture.”

Shoppers who buy their groceries at these open-air outlets are not only enjoying fresh, healthy foods in season and keeping small-scale agriculture alive. They're also preserving the green space that encircles their cities, towns, and suburbs; protecting air, water, and soil; supporting a food network that brings fresh produce to underserved areas; and even conserving energy, because their food doesn't have to travel very far from farm to table.

 

Last summer, as I visited relatives in Mississippi and California, I made a point of visiting their favorite farmers' markets as well. On those trips and on a few jaunts from my home in Brooklyn, New York, I was able to ask a wide cross-section of farmers and consumers what they liked most about farmers' markets. The first thing that almost all the shoppers mentioned, not surprisingly, was the taste of the food. At the Mississippi Farmers' Market, Teri Boswell and her three children were loading up on fresh tomatoes, okra, field peas, potatoes, and onions. She buys her produce here, she explained, because “there's a big difference in flavor. And it's truly seasonal, which is what I want for my family, especially since I don't have a garden.” The market was operating under a tent in a parking lot last summer while its new building was being constructed. Of the dozen farmers selling on the day I visited, two had full-scale operations, their tables overflowing with tomatoes and cucumbers, peppers and squash, cantaloupes and peas. Others sold only blueberries, say, or flowers. One man was serving tastes of blueberry salsa and blueberry lemonade, with recipes for those who bought his berries. Another was giving sweet, juicy samples from his truckload of watermelons.

Across the continent in Los Angeles, the Eagle Rock Farmers' Market had a more exotic air, with a row of palm trees towering 80 feet above the vendors' tents. I visited on a Friday evening in early September, and the tables brimmed with limes, avocados, strawberries, corn, lettuces, dried fruit and nuts, potted orchids, shrimp, and rock crabs. The market bustled with shoppers, Latino and Asian and Anglo, some clearly on their way home from work, some with children, still in their school uniforms, in tow. An electrical engineer named Freddy Angelito, shopping with his wife, told me, “We come here every Friday, because it's all fresh. We buy green leafy vegetables, fruits, seafood—everything you see.”

“Markets really clicked in the late '90s and 2000s. It's driven by consumer demand for local products, and at the same time by more and more small farmers who recognize that selling direct to the public is a better way to make a living than the other options in agriculture.”

Cooking with fresh regional foods has become a global movement, and an increasing number of professional chefs are building their menus around seasonal produce. One enthusiast is Peter Hoffman, chef and owner of the hip but wholesome restaurant Savoy, in New York's Soho neighborhood. Three days a week he dodges downtown traffic en route to the Union Square farmers' market on his blue bicycle, which is specially modified to hold a large metal box between its front wheel and handlebars. Once there, Hoffman walks slowly and stops frequently, piling the box high with a burlap bag full of fresh corn, a crate of yellow and red heirloom tomatoes, 30 dozen free-range eggs, a big, round, dark-green melon—whatever looks good. “Sure, you can buy cheaper vegetables,” he says, “but they taste cheap. We go through the market and taste different people's string beans. Are they tender? Is there some sweetness to them? Is there a nice bean flavor? You know, sometimes things don't taste like much. Here it's going to taste better, because it's ripe and hasn't been shipped a long way.” He enjoys cooking with the seasons and says his customers appreciate the results: “People want to be in touch with the passage of time. Cooking is a nice expression of where we are in the year.”

 

If taste and freshness are major reasons for shopping at a farmers' market, growing practices run a close second. As concerns rise over pesticides on produce, mad cow disease, and genetically modified crops, sales of organic food have been rising, too. With an annual growth rate of 20 percent, organics are now a $12 billion industry.

According to a recent nationwide survey by the nonprofit Farmers' Market Project, 63 percent of U.S. markets offer at least some products from farms that have been certified organic by the USDA. Billy Barron, a certified-organic vegetable grower in Mississippi, explains why he forswore pesticides: “I bought this little farm, and to use the chemicals, I had to go to a seminar. They told about how if you're out spraying and it blows back on you, you have to stop immediately, take a shower, and put your clothes through two cycles of wash. And if you get the concentrate on you, you don't wash your clothes, you burn 'em. I thought about it, and I decided to go another route.”

Many more growers use organic practices but choose not to go through the expensive, time-consuming certification process. And some follow practices that are even stricter than those set forth in the USDA standards. Hawthorne Valley Farm, for instance, in Ghent, New York, is both organic and biodynamic, following the precepts of philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who saw the ideal farm as one that produces everything it needs while working in harmony with the earth and the cosmos. “We treat the farm as an organism,” explains Sarah Shapiro, who helps run Hawthorne Valley's vegetable operation and also sells at the Union Square market, 125 miles south. “We use the animal waste for fertilizer, and we grow the feed for the animals. We process our own milk and make our own cheese. Whey is a byproduct of cheese, and it's good for the pigs. We also have a natural-food store, and the leftovers go to the pigs. Pigs or compost, there's really no waste. It just goes down the line.”

In California, bison rancher Kathy Lindner is also working in harmony with nature. The great-granddaughter of a woman who raised cattle in Montana in the late 1800s, she is acutely aware of heritage—both hers and the bison's. “These animals were native to California 500 years ago,” she told me between customers at the Hollywood Farmers' Market. “We're trying to mimic nature as closely as possible. We don't give them antibiotics or hormones, and we've started to replace the alfalfa on our farm, which is very water intensive, with dry-pasture grasses. We use vinegar to kill thistles, and we don't spray for flies; instead we're going to raise heritage turkeys, which will eat the flies and their larvae. These turkeys were on the verge of extinction because they're not a heavy meat animal, but the flavor is amazing. Eventually, we can sell the meat—and we're helping save a species.”

Despite her commitment to the environment, Lindner, like many market farmers, is not certified organic. “It's the cost,” she said. “It's $500 or $1,000 just to apply, and then they want one percent of your sales.” In addition, the farmer must keep careful records to prove she has operated organically for at least three years before applying for certification. “We're going to take another look at it,” Lindner told me, “but most of our customers are more concerned with knowing us, and knowing how we raise the animals. They trust us. And we don't want to have to raise the cost of the meat to offset the cost of the certification process.”

Like Lindner's customers, most market patrons seem willing to take a farmer's word for it when he explains his growing practices. In a way, the USDA organic seal is an official substitute for that farmer looking you in the eye and telling you how he operates. The label is far more important on a package of chicken or a box of strawberries that you buy in the grocery store, thousands of miles from the farm.

Those miles—and the energy they consume and the pollution they cause—are another reason to shop at farmers' markets. On average, grocery-store produce is shipped some 1,500 miles before you buy it—a 25 percent increase since 1981. One example: In Iowa, the nation's leading corn producer, corn has traveled an average of 1,426 miles to grocery-store shelves—compared with 20 miles for locally grown corn, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. The result? As much as 17 times more fossil fuel used and carbon dioxide emitted.

 

In addition to saving fuel, buying locally can help preserve green space in fast-growing metropolitan areas. Agricultural lands tend to rim cities because humans first settled in fertile areas, where we could easily feed ourselves. But as our suburbs have sprawled outward, those lands have come under intense development pressure. A 2002 study by the American Farmland Trust found that 86 percent of U.S. fruits and vegetables, 63 percent of dairy products, and 39 percent of meat come from land that is vulnerable to development. The study found that farmland was being lost at a rate of 1.2 million acres a year.

“These fish were swimming at eight o'clock last night. I picked this squash yesterday afternoon. Whole Foods can't compete with that. Some of their stuff is coming from the West Coast! It may be organic, but it's old. ”

Farmers' markets can be an important bulwark against development. Ted Blew, whose family raises hogs, fruits, vegetables, and grains on 160 acres in New Jersey, says that the farm would have gone out of business 20 years ago without the income from his stand at the Union Square market. Blew was a conventional grain grower in 1980, selling corn, wheat, and oats wholesale, when a severe drought wiped out the crops. “The only thing that survived were our vegetables,” he said. “A friend told us about Greenmarket [a New York City network that now numbers 54 farmers' markets]. They were desperate for farmers, and we started coming to Union Square. People would buy everything we had and say, ‘What else do you grow?' We sold half-hogs, and people said, ‘Well, why don't you make pork chops?' ” Thus was born a retail operation that has grown to include products like smoked andouille sausage, rye flour, buckwheat pancake mix, and nitrite-free hot dogs.

Studies show that food loses nutritional value as time passes, so a head of spinach that was picked the day before purchase is actually more nutritious than one that has spent two weeks in trucks and warehouses. And market devotees insist that freshly harvested food tastes better. As Mort Bernstein, manager of the Santa Monica Saturday Organic Farmers' Market, in California, explains, “The produce here is picked the day before, and it's picked ripe. It's reached its full sugar content. Even in the fancy markets that are organic, the produce is picked hard so that it won't spoil during shipping.”

Dave Harris, who sells fresh and smoked fish out of a couple of large white coolers at the Union Square market, says freshness has helped him compete against the new Whole Foods supermarket across the square. Harris owns Max Creek Hatchery, 160 miles north of the city, and drives to market once a week. He raises brook trout and rainbow trout, watercress, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, squash, and cucumbers. When I asked if he was worried about the “natural and organic” supermarket a few hundred feet away, he shot back, “These fish were swimming at eight o'clock last night. I picked this squash yesterday afternoon. Whole Foods can't compete with that. Some of their stuff is coming from the West Coast! It may be organic, but it's old. ”

In the age of processed food and takeout, however, cooking with produce is a challenge for some. So markets hold cooking demonstrations, and farmers give out recipes and advice. Some even urge their customers to improve their eating habits. Johanna Willins is one of a number of senior citizens who sell at the East New York Farmers' Market. She grows cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, onions, garlic, kale, Swiss chard, and “a bunch of herbs” in a community garden plot in Brooklyn. “I try to explain to the young women with children how to use the herbs instead of salt,” says Willins. “It's more healthful. And when you're making a salad, you don't want just cucumbers and lettuce. Add some Swiss chard, two or three different kinds of tomatoes, onions, maybe peppers. It makes your salad more interesting.”

The East New York market is counted among those that depend on the federal Farmers' Market Nutrition Program to survive. Seventy-three percent of the purchases there are made with FMNP coupons, which go to low-income senior citizens and to families enrolled in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. East New York is an example of a “food desert,” says Chris Heitmann of the nonprofit group Project for Public Spaces. “There are few supermarkets, the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables is very poor, and what is available is high priced and of low quality,” he says. Farmers' markets serve a vital need in these areas, and FMNP coupons were used to purchase almost $45 million worth of fresh produce in 2004. It wasn't just in low-income areas, either: I saw people using the coupons at almost every market I visited.

The coupons help farmers, too, as does cash. When you buy fruits or vegetables in a grocery store, only 20 cents of each dollar goes to the farmer—less than half the amount of 50 years ago. For meat, it's about 30 cents. At a farmers' market, by contrast, the farmer gets the entire dollar. “This is a wonderful thing,” says Gerald Dupree, who sells vegetables from his 50-acre farm at the Mississippi market. “If young people want to go into agriculture now, they can make a living. You don't sell wholesale—you don't have to dicker on the price.”

Some farmers are finding a way to increase their margins even more, by selling value-added products like pickles, jams, baked goods, yogurt drinks, soups, and chutneys. Others entice customers to the farm with activities such as hayrides, apple picking, wine tasting, and even birdwatching. Robert Lewis, chief marketing representative for the New York State Department of Agriculture, says, “The direct marketing link has been the salvation of many, many farms. Farmers' markets give them the ability to control their own destiny. They can sell at a price that helps them cope with the costs they face, at the scale of production they have.”

Farmers' markets may help growers stay afloat, but many advocates argue that more fundamental changes are needed in the way the United States approaches agriculture. Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, a leading advocate for farmers' markets in Congress, says, “The USDA is used to promoting a very big-business model” that focuses on commodities such as soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, and sugar. Last year Congress finally allocated $1 million for the Farmers' Market Promotion Program, which was authorized in the 2002 farm bill but never funded. Part of the problem is that not all markets collect sales data, says Neil D. Hamilton, who directs the Agricultural Law Center at Iowa's Drake University (and is a market farmer himself). Many farmers are prickly about revealing their profits, but the result, he says, “is that you can't go to Congress and say, ‘Did you know there are X number of farmers who are generating Y amount of income?' Farmers' markets are considered to be this quaint, not very important part of the farm system. I don't think that's true, but for the most part, we don't have the numbers to tell the story.”

As debate swirls around the 2007 farm bill, many are urging a greater emphasis on small and midsize farms, on farmers who grow a wide variety of crops, and on farm-based conservation programs. Advocates aren't necessarily looking for direct subsidies; instead they seek support like marketing help and more purchases of fresh produce for schools. A number of states are already moving in that direction. New York, like many other states, has a program to help schools buy locally grown food. Now it's looking to develop a wholesale farmers' market in New York City, where midsize farmers can sell their food in larger quantities to restaurants and grocery stores. Some states and cities have developed “food policy councils,” in which government agencies and groups focused on agriculture, health, education, labor, or the environment join forces to improve the quality of food in the area. In Michigan, for instance, the state council is working to re-create the small-scale distribution network that used to connect local farms with local businesses.

All these efforts and more will be necessary to bring farmers' markets into the American mainstream. But Ann Harvey Yonkers, who cofounded a farmers' market in Dupont Circle, a mile north of the White House, sees hope. “We're seeing unlikely coalitions forming,” she says. “They're coming from the environmental side, the health side, the agriculture side, the religious side.” She has a ready explanation, too: “The powerful part of the farmers' market movement is that it's grassroots. Nobody devised it; it came up from the people, and that's why it's growing. It's a very democratic institution. You can participate by buying an apple.”

 

Mary-Powel Thomas is a former Audubon editor. She shops at the farmers' market at Borough Hall in Brooklyn.