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Comments on: Deception at the Farmers' Market

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By: Heardoc
September 26, 2010 6:20 AM
"and ask them a lot of questions. Ask for the exact location of the farm where the produce is grown. If they claim their produce is “pesticide free,” ask them what methods they use to control pests on their crops. Ask exactly when the produce was picked. "
And make sure there are at least eight people behind you
at the busiest time of the day while you third degree the vendor.......
By: Suzanne Santos
September 26, 2010 5:57 AM
We at Sustainable Food Center in Austin, Texas, enforce the "you must grow what you sell" rule at all our farmers markets, even at the burden of having to spend a lot of time on the road for initial farm inspections and then re-inspections when there is a question of re-selling.

There is excellent advice above about taking time to get to know your farmer, asking lots of questions, asking the market management for their rules and regulations regarding re-seller policy. Ask these additional questions of management - Have you ever dismissed a farmer for reselling? What was the incident? What is your method of ensuring there are no resellers? (formal, documented inspections or 'we just pop in'). Also, if you see a farmer any particular week who happens to have a highly popular product that no one else has - ask the market management to investigate the highly unusual 'out of season' crop right away. Sometimes there are legitimate specialties that come from a verified farmer because they have a second season in Texas, but other times, the pristine field crops like green beans are falsely presented as grown by the farmer when they in fact come from Mexico. If the market management shuns responsibility to strongly enforce re-inspections and follow up on reselling complaints, then the advice above is warranted. Walk away from that market.
If a market does allow reselling by farmers from other sources (which is allowable under some state rules, go figure) even in another state, then that market should take the responsibility to be transparent and have identification for "distributors" as opposed to "farmers". This is done in Dallas, Tyler and I am sure hundreds of other cities in Texas that I have not yet visited.
By: illuminoidal
September 26, 2010 1:51 AM
A farmer's market starting at 3PM on a weekday in no way means that it's just for the unemployed. We have one near us that is 3-6PM and it's nothing but working people shopping there - people with families, people that start work early and get off early, people with kids to pick up or with kids already in tow. It's not a shi-shi end of town, yet the farmers find plenty of people to buy their goods.