Highly recommend the educational resources supplied by the Pulitzer Center in association with The 1619 Project. If we want to lead a new system of farming through our work, we need to envelop these experiences and lessons into our governance and business models.
When Charisse was hired as FMC’s E.D. earlier this year, I was intrigued both by her background and her plan to take that big job on, AND to continue to oversee her wildly successful company Lokal Artisan Foods with its French Toast Bites brand. As someone who had also alternated between for-profit entrepreneurial work and community organizing, I was very excited to experience this type of energy from our new leader.
And what energy it was. Charisse never seemed to meet a situation in which she didn’t have the confidence to address, never lacked a joke or self deprecating aside to lessen any awkwardness, and always made sure that folks felt seen and heard, richly using their names and building a special communication with each person. I marveled at all of it. I told her so and hope that I told her so in a way that she accepted it.
She was a constant learner, which I knew had made already her kin among our market leaders, since that is the energy they also bring. I often told her that market managers were gonna love having someone like her in this role and I felt she knew exactly what I meant. Of course one of her first public outputs as our E.D. was establishing a new vendor fund because she had lived that concern, both as a PA market manager and as an entrepreneur.
I was grateful to see how much time she spent on the World FMC Academy calls, attending almost all of them (choosing the early am option of the 2 they offer, in order to make time for them before her long work day started), listening in and sending me dozens of questions and comments during and after those calls.
She jokingly reminded the FMC team on almost every call how recently she had arrived, sharing what day number she was on as FMC’s ED. (She began on June 20, so she was with us for one week shy of 7 months.)
I was humbled by her willingness to use her energy, her enormous social capital, and intellectual bank to assist FMC. To lead an overwhelmingly white staff and white culture to its hoped for future as a leader in the new anti-racist, entrepreneurial, and joyous food system for which farmers markets should lead.
I met her in person only twice, as it was normal for our staff to only meet up once or twice a year in our little remote-officed NGO with staff working at home from coast to coast to coast across the US. I was happy that our East Coast Deputy Director Willa had more face time with Charisse, as did our Philly-based admin/membership person, Meghan. It was great seeing that team begin to form. I was sorry for those staff who never had the pleasure to meet her in person.
I looked forward to seeing her much more in person in 2024.
I’m stunned at this loss.
Not only for FMC, but for her own community and family, and the loss of such promise.
I’m also angry with our world for not taking better care of black and brown (especially female) leaders. I take that indictment as my own future work as well, and promise to do better to support and honor these women.
Here’s to you, Charisse McGill. Rest In POWER.
I’m excited to finally be able to spend the time on writing the history of the modern era of farmers markets. Thanks to all who have filled out the survey form already, but if you haven’t yet, here it is again:
https://forms.gle/4c4Hp1zgQnLqoGDJ8
The purpose of this will likely be a series of articles for market leaders, policy leaders, and researchers to better understand the importance of the farmers market in the local food movement, with its flexibility in fulfilling market day and also system level impacts while remaining the public, informal face of the entire movement. There are many external challenges ahead, and my hope is this research will offer strategies for offering support to market organizations and to center farmers, foragers, ranchers, and harvesters who are the stewards of land and water and community leaders in every sense.
If the articles turn into a book, it will also be for those general readers who are interested in community and current history, who can learn how to support their local markets more fully .
Shout out to The Dane County Farmers Market book seen above which is a treasure trove of the type of primary data that is sooo helpful. Not only does it detail the entire history of what is one of the first of our kind (opening September 30, 1972) designed as a community-led, transparently governed, open-air farmers market, but I also love that the book arranges that history in chapters by its eras of market manager! (Of course I love that because as an FMC staffer, I follow the strategic plan which prioritizes our work in directly supporting market operators.) Kudos to authors Mary and Quentin Carpenter, with equal credit to Mary’s term as market manager.
So how many of you have published histories of your market? Feel free to leave links in the comments…
I’ve got a post on the FMC site about my recent travel mentioned in the last post but am adding a point of view on this blog too:
My October 2023 trip to work with Campagna Amica and World FMC was focused on U.S./Mediterranean team sharing around cash incentives and learning more about multi-functional ag. The global interest in cash incentives is obviously not aligned with the US SNAP model (as few have this sort of national program) but is about the other incentives we see at markets offered to certain segments of audiences to participate such as FMNP, Produce Prescription, children’s market clubs and others, as well as the matching programs of those coupons.
My FMC blog focuses on that subject so all that I’ll add here is that based on the dozens of recent conversations I’ve had within the US and now with leaders across the world, I believe it is beyond time for the US farmers market sector to reframe the purpose and goals of our farmers market incentive work.
The public health sector is a great partner especially around the SNAP & matching work with quite clear goals, but farm direct leaders must hold their own theory of change as to why THEY do these intensive programs. These might include increasing the number of recurring shoppers, assisting farmers to fairly earn enough and expand the type of regional products, improving health outcomes, reducing customer confusion and expanding education by having a single point of information at the market’s tent, using multiple incentives to expand civic engagement and local participation among partners and of course, building a sustainable program framework that doesn’t cripple low-capacity/high-efficiency farmers markets and direct to consumer farmers by matching its seasonality and type of messaging and measurement.
By doing that, farm direct outlets can be clear with Congress and with USDA about why some of the recent trends to prioritize farmer terminals over central terminals, or why restricting matches only to fruits and vegetables rather than allowing them to use their matches for any regionally produced item available at a well-curated farm direct outlet have not always been the appropriate model.
Always happy to talk more about these ideas both as a FMC staff member or as an independent consultant for markets. Contact me if that is helpful and check out the FMC blog post linked at the beginning of this post to find FMC resources.
Now on to multi-functional agriculture.
This is an approach that:
… “refers to the fact that agricultural activity, beyond its role of producing food and fibre, may also have several other functions such as renewable natural resources management, landscape and biodiversity conservation and contribution to the socio-economic viability of rural areas”….”the use of the concept can be traced back to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)”
So in theory, it requires us to think of agriculture as a system of healthy support of land and of people and not just as production. In practice, it suggest that we need to tie our farm direct efforts to those projects that prioritize biodiversity, justice, health, and rural places.
Italy has adopted this approach within their massive farmer association Coldiretti, and it was on display during the Villaggio. Farmers, agritourism leaders among others with their Coldiretti yellow flags and hats in the hundreds sat for hours in the tents while national political leaders lined up to explain how their approach will offer results. Urban leaders on panels indicated their deep knowledge of the territorial market sphere, underlining their commitment to the fact that their city’s future is tied to their region’s future. Their national farmers market entity Campagna Amica used the occasion to showcase their development of the World FMC to discuss how to connect the concentration of urban farmers markets to the rural places those markets depend on across the globe.
So it was exciting to see and to hear about this approach even while it is undeniable that the issue in the US is there are few viable connections any longer between rural and urban and as a result, massive misunderstandings of the other among the denizens of each. Even the 10,000 of so farmers market sites we can brag about often promote urban ag over multi functional ag, may inadvertently disincentivize rural activities among market vendors, and often fail to measure rural outcomes of their work or only measure market day sales.
U.S. farmers markets could start to operationalize this approach through connecting CSA, farm stands, and agritourism to their efforts – and not just as a part of the market day:
Asking producers if they have those type of activities and how they can be promoted through the farmers market;
Offering two-way benefits for urban shoppers and rural farmers such as those outlined in Kuni;
Highlighting the role of land stewardship as alleviating rapid overdevelopment in the region and how the worst effects of climate change benefit from natural spaces protecting developed ones;
Promoting healthy outdoor activity with farms as the destinations as Vermont does.
If farm direct is to thrive, it will require seeing it as a pathway to creating better places, to building more closely knit communities, and to adding locally controlled “wealth” for urban and rural, which of course should mean land or knowledge wealth as often as usually means financial wealth.
Check out this list as one set of policies that would help all citizens and all places:
The Ten Pillars of PDA and RUBI’s 21st Century Rural New Deal:
1. Rebuild Farm, Forest and Food Economies
2. Reward Work and Ensure Livable Wages
3. Dismantle Monopolies, Empower and Support Local Business
4. Invest in Community and Regional Infrastructure
5. Re-Build Small Town Centers
6. Cultivate Self-Reliance and Resilience
7. Invest in Rural Healthcare
8. Fully Fund Rural Schools
9. Make Rural and Small Town Housing Affordable
10. Re-Localize Rural and Small Town Banks
I’m excited about sharing this international language and approach for farmers markets as IT will build capacity for their organizations while it draws their producer partners closer to them in a shared future.
Yes, I hear you chuckling as to my poor poor life, traveling twice in one year to Rome to work with the World Farmers Market Coalition. Accepted.
Still, I have a few butterflies and some anxiety about this trip because the stakes keep raising in terms of how to have an impact on those that WFMC amasses for us, including trade ministers, ag leaders, FAO, USDA, US Embassy staff, funders, among many many others. (And then, once back, how to share the global excitement around farmers markets with US stakeholders?)
The exciting news is that this trip will be held at the Villaggio Coldiretti, a 3-day farmers market educational event held at the Circus Maximus, which on our last trip, Bruce Springsteen was using as his concert hall. (We were able to hear the sound check and see the crowds build for that event because the WFMC events were nearby at the gorgeous Circo Massimo farmers market operated by our Italian WFMC partner Campagna Amica.)
I’ll be cramming facts and figures and stories into my head especially around nutrition incentive programs as this is one US pilot that our fellow market leaders are eager to hear about. Please reply to this with any that you think I should share, and I’ll do my best to report back here and on FMC’s social media.
One of the messages that I use in my farmers market support work is to urge operators to make sure the programmatic and governance oversight is made more visible, so that the work can be better supported financially and through partnerships and policy.
“Don’t hide the hard work” is how I often say it.
One of the main reasons this is so necessary is because of the enormous success of the estimated 9,000 market sites in the US in increasing social cohesion, healthy food access, local economic activity, ecological stewardship, and other positive impacts of regional food systems.
But even though there are significant impacts, the pop up nature of many of our sites and the high-impact but low capacity staffing most employ can make it difficult to explain.
And often market leaders hear this talk of sharing the impacts and think despairingly of being required to undertake long data collection assignments and text heavy reports to communicate this.
Instead, the answer may be something as simple as a visual image or a quote that illustrates the relevance of this work to the larger civic community.
This map is one such example. It is of the national park in Ohio and includes the farmers market that is held in the park, as well as images of (just a few of many more) of the other farm sites along the path. It also places the market as part of this ecological system which is also a wonderful message.
Can you spot the market? (It’s helpful to pinch to zoom in to the map to look around)
And can you see how this is one great way to share a measurement of impacts?
Pics of the market from 2022:
I have begun to formally write a history of the US farmers market movement that has developed since 1976. As some readers may know, I began to gather histories of markets more than 20 years ago, writing down reminiscences from founders, reading collected histories, and creating the start of a framework that I use to explain the re-emergence of this ancient mechanism. Take a look at this post that does its best to give an overview of this framework:
In preparation for this writing project, I have begun to collect more histories from each of those eras (as well as those outliers who don’t so neatly fit into the larger era) which I believe will become a series of articles around the modern farmers market movement and is meant to offer information to funders, shoppers, and to partners in order for farmers market communities to gain more sustained support.
I’m asking leaders to add their market history to my database through this quick form. I’ll follow up with more q for some of those who respond to ask to use them as a case study.
Here is the form to fill out:
https://forms.gle/i2YfaZhYsuiMcHnc6
And thanks.
Am in Vermont for the month of July, partly to continue my long association with farmers market organizers, NOFA-VT, and related partners around regional food systems. As a summer/fall climate refugee, albeit one who is very privileged to be able to easily move about the US— i also travel seeking a permanent home for the many summer/fall months when my own home is close to unlivable because of climate.
This trip I spent 2 weeks in South Burlington, moved to Royalton for 2, then will be in Montpelier for the last/first week of August before heading to Montreal for the day and then back to Midwest to work on projects in Ohio and PA.
As all readers can surmise, being here for the Vermont Floods last week was alarming, but also increases my respect for this tiny rural state. During the storm, I watched the news closely, stayed awake most of the night, checking social media updates and texting friends more in the path of the storms.
Once the storm passed, the recovery was immediate. That included a rapid declaration of disaster by the White House (at the clear request of the Republican governor) which triggers a great many resources to begin to flow. Radio, television and online sites shared ways to raise funds for those affected and where to find emergency services. Crews were out repairing roads bridges and train trestles the day after the storm. One farmer told me by text: “this is a much more catastrophic storm in comparison to Irene but everyone is organized and willing and able to help this time, it makes it seem so much less mentally daunting.”
The local news today suggested that the department of Ag, known in VT as the Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets (often shortened as the “Agency” ) is still waiting for clarity around the declaration of disaster specifically from the USDA to see what else they can offer producers, may of whom have already shared heartbreaking losses (what I have heard are stories such as one farm losing 900 birds, another saw all of their beehives swept away.) And according to a story posted by VT Digger reporter Hannah Cho, all of the new American families who farm at Intervale Center in Burlington and in Winooski lost everything: “For the majority of their 100 farmers, “this is not a hobby [nor] a business,” Laramee said. Most have full-time jobs as janitors, food workers and in hotels. The crops the farmers grow go towards feeding their households throughout the entire year.” (To donate to this effort: https://www.intervale.org/donate)
The state-based entities led NOFA-VT working together as always on regional food and farming are moving very quickly to collect and share resources that often arise from neighbors,Including local businesses.
So as Vermonters begin the phases of recovery (community care, priority assessment and property evaluation), most of it will likely happen with overwhelming stress, random fits of exuberance around community, with depression and fear mixed in – and that’s just to get to the rebuilding.
What is not clear yet is how this state will define resilience in the future; what we have learned in the Gulf Coast is that, as disasters come again, many of our systemic recovery phases now require extraordinary personal levels of resilience that are not matched by institutional levels of resilience, leaving more and more of this work up to informal groups of neighbors and resources. Let’s hope Vermont can do better using ours and others examples.
(Originally posted in 2017; republishing to get it back to the top)
Anyone who works on farmers markets (hopefully!) understands that one major area that is constantly hampering our effectiveness in creating this new world of community food systems is the lack of reckoning with the institutional racism within the systems that make up our material world.
Or, as Raj Patel said at Slow Food Nations 2018:
“You don’t fix the past with a certain type of tokenism; you fix it with a reckoning. And that reckoning is something the food movement has yet to have.”
To me, the argument among some growers and organizers that there are “too many farmers markets” indicates that the field is in dire need of growing its reach and thinking through re-positioning its outcomes. It seems clear to me that we need to turn back to prioritizing the production side of the equation, supporting growers and other producers more directly and more widely, and increasing purchasers at our thousands of markets by redefining the language of shopping at markets as transformative for the community and nourishing for ones own family even as we continue to make them truly welcoming to all types of people.
So to see the recent strong emergence of the food justice movement, led by people of color, focusing on collaborative production and on innovative messaging on why choosing healthy food is activism at its purest form has been inspiring and humbling at the same time for many white allies. Inspiring to see how the work is imbued with innovation and collaboration at every level (see Dara Cooper’s quote and interview at the end as an example), and humbling because there is so much history around these injustices that many of us still don’t fully comprehend. With the emergence of this chapter, we will gain access to a new set of tools and pilots to learn how to better organize on systemic issues that depress our markets’ and food systems potential. Which means that when market leaders get to the “unconscious competence” level of their market work and build systems, their seasoned staff can join housing boards, mobilize on public transportation systems, work on greenways and environmental degradation hot spots, become a voice on county level policies to incentivize using productive land for food and so on to really grow our market communities.
Another massive contribution that black, native and other writers and organizers of disenfranchised communities are bringing to the food and farming table is a demand for context and disciplined language as seen in the rejection of the “food desert” label. Because of black leaders explaining its weakness, I have long rejected that language in my farmers market work starting in New Orleans, as it implies scarcity rather than the truth: a systemic denial of resources to that community. And often there IS food – sometimes it’s a lot of bad food which is hard to combat when using food desert language to organize, or the structure of food procurement is so informal that it is missed by those defining it (supermarkets are the main indicator of food security which is a pretty weak indicator) or the lines of the supposed desert are drawn in such a way as to not encapsulate actual neighborhoods or assets. This piece is very helpful to keep in the front of ones mind when discussing this with fellow staff and with the larger community.
The great Karen Washington has said a lot on this subject:
What I would rather say instead of “food desert” is “food apartheid,” because “food apartheid” looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics. You say “food apartheid” and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?
Also vital to think about the language of the “decolonization of food” as Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux nation from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and founder and CEO of The Sioux Chef is working towards:
We’re trying to raise awareness of the history of the land and on how to live sustainability on what’s around us,” Sherman notes that much of his work centers on recovering the cuisine that existed among American Indians prior to the arrival of European settlers. On reservations, American Indians were restricted in their rights to hunt, fish, or forage, and thus forced to make do with US Army rations of flour, lard, and salt—which were later replaced by the commodity food program.
Dara Cooper: “We need the ability to feed and nourish our communities, and the repair of the systematic harm that has and continues to be done to Black people,” Cooper says emphatically. To that end, NBFJA is working on a broad campaign in coalition and community with Black-led “Free the Land” focused organizations. We need to shift away from the ways in which capitalism teaches us to have private control over land. We have to move away from extraction of land for a very few, and shift toward land reform that addresses indigenous right to sovereignty and Black people’s right to self-determination in our communities in a collective way.”
Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm / Farming While Black: “Food sovereignty is about who’s in charge … and ultimately what gets to our plates.”
https://www.essence.com/feature/food-redlining-reparations-free-the-land/
I have a goal to write each week here; I hope this is helpful for all of you.
Wanted to share my current reading list in the hopes that it may spark a discussion of what you are reading:
The Brinkley book has been fascinating, not only because I’ve been a huge fan of Rachel Carson since the 1980s (who I believe has never received her due for exponentially increasing awareness of environmental extinctions and illness’ connections to unchecked pesticide use) but also because this author has a talent for creating a compelling story around the leaders of the environmental movement which is spurring my thinking around my farmers market book currently in draft form.
This Rome travel book is because I will be joining many of my fellow market peers and attending the World Farmers Market Coalition meeting in May.
Graeber’s incredible analysis into how direct action groups collect and organize is another keeper of his for me from this late great writer.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2543048.Direct_Action
This book about my home state and one of its fishing community is a new one for my bookshelf after I saw and heard its thoughtful author at a recent literary festival in New Orleans. As someone who has worked closely with a few commercial fishers and so try to keep an ear and eye out to be always learning more about their future, I am expecting this to give me great insight on what that community is facing in our current political, ecological and cultural “spend-down” time.
Jackson MS is a place that doesn’t get enough notice nor enough support from its state nor the feds for the challenges they face or enough credit for the innovative work happening there from many including from Cooperation Jackson. Also, anytime I can read in detail about food access within one community, I find it offers many lessons I can use in many places.
One thing I do each December is to think about my work year, what I wished I had accomplished and what I might do in the next year. I am sure this list is no surprise to any of the hardworking market operators and market partners that I wish I had done more for in 2022, but in these exhausting years of the COVID crisis, there has been a growing and mostly unmet need to offer organizational services such as grant writing assistance, board development and governance audits, staff Human Resources support, and product development for market vendors.
In 2023, I am determined to redouble my efforts to increase support for farmers market operators through more directed technical assistance and resource collection and creation, both in my staff role at Farmers Market Coalition and in my small role in my own time working as a consultant directly with markets across the US and with the newly emerging World Farmers Markets Coalition.
Here are some of my 2023 goals:
Continue connecting climate activists and funders to community food leaders so our work can be named, outlined, and funded in the climate mitigation work happening across the US and globe. This includes seeking funding for a disaster recovery toolkit for farmers markets;
Pick up new skills and tools including completing a course on mapping networks which I believe is an excellent tool for market leaders to know exactly where they need to deploy their limited resources for maximum effect;
I also have carried around a longer term goal to start too seek funding for an FM Anthology book; once secured, asking writers and activists to contribute pieces on the vision and history of the modern market movement that illustrate how it has contributed so much to localized health and wealth initiatives in thousands of places across the globe;
Working more on a regional effort here in New Orleans named the Pontchartrain Network to increase connections across the dozen or so Louisiana parishes and MS counties that rely on the lake watershed. That work will focus on educational efforts to all civic leaders about how to achieve increased production and consumption of food grown in the region;
At FMC, we will be seeking a new Executive Director in 2023, as Ben Feldman plans to step down after a successful run the last 3 + years (although I certainly hope he will remain as our policy person);
I expect to help the authors of the Anti Racist Farmers Market Toolkit with their goal of implementation of its strategies in markets by helping them secure funding for that work. If we get those efforts well underway, we can begin to seek leaders in the indigenous community to add their own content towards similar strategies so the modern market system can also be a more useful tool for tribal nations that are prioritizing culturally meaningful production and healthy options for their residents; to that same end, our work with USDA supporting a pilot of 1890 land-grant universities to add farmers markets to their campuses has already taught our team a great deal about how to help their efforts and we would hope to add more sites and 1994 land-grant universities and Hispanic-serving universities in future rounds of that work;
We will also be working on the new Regional Food Business Centers that USDA has added as a new level of support to regional food systems, and expecting to play a large role in the work with farmers markets across all of the centers;
Our food access team will seek to expand its funding to assist market organizations and states that are branching out past GusNIP funding for permanent incentive and benefit program support, as well as continue to support the large pool of GusNIP grantees whose work often becomes the realpolitik for food access decisions at USDA.
And with my decades of work on finding appropriate and relevant evaluation systems for community food system leaders to use (rather than funder or academic versions of what they think evaluation should mean), we will continue to create and support software and analog tools to conduct low-intensity evaluation of the many many impacts that markets have on their community, and in helping those with data turn them into infographics and analysis they can use to increase funding and awareness.
One other priority will remain: the development of FMC into serving a permanent role as the dynamic, stable, and effective go-to entity for the estimated 9,000 market communities in the US, as well as supporting our partners in similar sectors such as CSAs, farm stands, agritourism, and community gardening to be able to do the same. I am happy to report that that internal work is being ably managed by our Deputy Director Willa Sheikh and enthusiastically aided by our entire stellar FMC team which I am deeply proud to work alongside. Learn more about them here: https://farmersmarketcoalition.org/joinus/team/
So that’s my plan. I’d love to hear some of your plans around farmers market work and maybe even build a support network for those of us who do this work. If so, leave a comment.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/bernie-sanders-worker-ownership
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 