Produce to the People, Right On!

The farm-to-city connection can be difficult to establish.

by Jenn Carbin



You got that ripe: Bob Pierson chats with a shopper at the Ridge and Girard market. photo: Eddy Palumbo

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Bob Pierson wears a straw hat while strolling the farmers markets he runs. Like the farmers selling around him, he calls to mind someone of another era: Despite living in Philadelphia for nearly 30 years, he is the small-town–gentleman counterpart to their tillers of soil. His eyes are cornflower blue, like the blue in his checked shirt, and he speaks so softly that farmers often don’t hear him the first time. He’s a persistent guy, though. The Farmers’ Market at South and Passyunk streets, which he created six growing seasons ago, has half a dozen farmers selling their wares, and it’s one of the busier such markets in the city. Pierson says, "It’s the first one, and the best" of the city’s farmers markets, which happen now 14 times each week during growing season. He’s had a hand in setting up several of them, including three as director of Farm to City, a farmers-market program begun in 2000.

Setting up farmers markets in this city presents a number of challenges. There are many tasks: applying for grants; the "struggle to get farmers to come into Philadelphia"; scouting accessible locations and securing permission from landowners to borrow the spots; and selling locals on farmers markets. Indeed, helping to create a culture where patronizing these markets is a way of life may be the greatest challenge of all.

There are frustrations, such as the fact that the Farmers Market Nutrition Program, a government program set up to help both farmers and people in low-income communities, is, to some extent, increasing the incentive for those low-income people to shop elsewhere.

And that’s just part of what makes establishing markets in under-served communities even more difficult. It seems like a natural fit: Residents of low-income neighborhoods, who often have no access to fresh, local food — or even supermarkets — and struggling, small-scale farmers, each providing what the other needs. But the obstacles to making markets work where they’re arguably most needed are daunting.

Pierson is not alone in his quest to bring local food to the city. Duane Perry of the nonprofit Farmers’ Market Trust has set up farmers markets for the past four years (until 2000, with help from Pierson). But whereas Pierson is happy to bring local food to any and all city people and help sustain Pennsylvania agriculture, Perry sees the primary purpose of the Trust’s markets to be getting nutritious food to the under-served.

"We have a food-distribution system in this country that’s supposed to be unparalleled, yet we can’t get nutritious food to everyone," says Perry. "There’s this seeming contradiction."

Why aren’t more Philadelphians (and Americans in general) involved with farmers markets? The main reasons seem to relate to convenience and lack of familiarity with the concept of local food.

The food at these markets can’t be beat. But although the organizations running farmers markets might grant the odd soap or candlestick maker an available spot, you can’t buy sundry items at a true farmers market, where farmers sell what they grow, pick, raise and slaughter, directly to you. (Reading Terminal Market, for example, is not a farmers market; most of the vendors there are not farmers.) Often, you must be willing to spend a few more cents a pound. After the growing season ends, you must switch gears and shop elsewhere.

There are several good reasons to support farmers markets, though. They include that local food retains the taste and many valuable nutrients lost in shipping produce from other places and supporting local farmers helps maintain their way of life and beautiful land. In addition to these considerations, farmers markets are fun, lively places.

Perry has worked with food and marketing issues for more than 10 years. He previously worked for the Reading Terminal Market Merchants’ Association; the Trust’s first project was conducting nutrition classes for inner-city children. The Trust has markets in two upper-income/tourist locations, a few in mixed-income areas, and four in low-income areas, including North Philadelphia and Chester.

Markets in well-off locations can command higher prices and are busier, so they have a special purpose for the Trust. Perry says they serve as enticements for the farmers granted spots in them to work markets in low-income areas, too. "The goal of having those markets is to generate income [for the farmers] as a way to offset the cost of running markets in under-served areas," he explains. In addition, the Trust, for its services, offers a "differential fee structure" that favors farmers in low-income neighborhoods.

Markets in low-income areas don’t support the presence of more than a few farmers at a time, and it often takes longer to build a customer base in them, say Perry, Pierson and several farmers. Pierson, who oversees two markets in under-served areas, admits that farmers markets and low-income communities are "a difficult fit."

In addition to having serious money and convenience considerations, people in low-income areas are typical of Americans not living in rural areas in that they have little knowledge of "seasonality" and local foods. It’s not, however, that people in under-served areas are necessarily less inclined to buy nutritious food, points out Sandy Sherman, director of nutrition education at the Trust.

"I’m a strong believer that people want to eat in a way that supports good health, but they often lack access to healthy food and information to support healthy food choices," she says. Sherman has conducted research on Trust markets, both community-run markets selling non-local as well as local produce (in the early days) and farmer-run markets, all including nutrition-education efforts. Her data show that people who shopped at these markets "consumed significantly more fruits and vegetables than those who did not," and that even once markets closed for the season (or for good), produce consumption remained higher than before the markets existed.

There are significant health implications in such results. The "diet-related diseases" — high-blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers and diabetes — flourish in low-income and minority neighborhoods.

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