Farmers Markets Show Resilience in Times of Supply Chain Issues

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What obstacles, if any, are holding farmers markets back?

Farmers markets suffer from the greenwashing of the very authenticity they embody; large chain retailers poach and repurpose the “farmers market” brand to sell commodity products that have traveled through the long supply chain – the very chain that exploits farmers. Farmers market operators are logistics specialists in their own right – they manage an incredible amount of complexity related to vendor load-in/load-out, shopper traffic flow, and safety requirements just to open the doors to the market each day. Market managers need to be properly compensated for this work, but are often underpaid for their efforts.

Farmers markets also need access to affordable, scale-appropriate transaction technology. While some markets still operate on cash, we live in an era of mobile wallets, ApplePay, Venmo, and more – research makes clear that people buy more when using credit cards, and farmers need more widespread access to technology that can support multiple types of transactions for the convenience of their shoppers.Vendors at farmers markets are often small businesses, who struggle to reach profitability through the Farmers Market retail channel alone. They often need to diversify into other channels, such as Community Supported Agriculture shares (CSAs), wholesale, or online sales, but lack the efficiency to do so alone as individual farmers. Many farmers markets across the nation and the world have historic roots in serving as a wholesale outlet and a retail outlet – local grocers would often drive their truck to the market before opening hours and negotiate directly with farmers. The key here is the word “direct” – as large chain distributors have taken over, grocers and other local wholesale buyers have delegated their purchasing to middlemen instead of purchasing at markets, and farm profitability has been affected. As cities and regions, we need to think about ways that we can leverage the flexibility of farmers markets and the direct support of multiple regional farms, who are incorporating the best of organic and sustainable practices, to create resilient wholesale outlets that will help anchor farm profits.