What Is a Farmers Market?: Both Simple and Complex
Plus, sorrow and rage over a mass shooting at my alma mater
Enough Was Enough Long Ago
I have been alternating between sorrow and rage since last night when Michigan State University — my alma mater — was the latest school to be hit with a mass shooting. I mourn the deaths of three students and the severe, life-threatening injuries to five others by a man, with no apparent connection to the university, who when confronted by police chose to take his own life rather than be held to account for his heinous crimes.
According to the website Gun Violence Archive, the mass shooting at MSU was the 15th nationally — in February alone. There is no other developed nation on earth in which mass shootings are a commonplace occurrence. For years, most Americans have told pollsters that they support rational and reasonable gun regulations that have absolutely nothing to do with confiscation. Yet we allow ourselves to be out-shouted by a minority with enough political clout to silence even discussion of these issues, and who believe the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution means the right to bear arms is unlimited and entitles anyone to buy a gun anywhere and anytime.
And virtually every day, the freedom of the rest of us to go to school or a movie theater or for the love of God a July 4th parade is eroded by a hail of bullets somewhere in the country.
I have been fortunate to never (so far) having been close to a mass shooting, but it is the second time in a half-year that one has hit too close to home. Last July, 10 days after the July 4th parade massacre in suburban Highland Park, I visited the site, stood in the plaza where seven people lost their lives in an instant and dozens more suffered horrible injuries, and looked up at the rooftop from which the assailant launched the ambush. I could not possibly imagine the horror of that day. It was the most humbling experience of my life.
The MSU murders occurred on the eve of the 5th anniversary of the massacre that took 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It is the 15th anniversary of the rampage that took five students’ lives at Northern Ilinois University in DeKalb. Nearly 24 years have passed since the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Enough was enough a long time ago.
Farmers Markets are Many-Splendored Things
“What is a Farmers Market?” was the title given to a panel, presented virtually, last Wednesday (February 8) during 18th Annual Chicago Food Justice Summit, produced by Chicago Food Policy Action Council. This question might have initially seemed a bit obvious for an audience of Good Food advocates attending a discussion organized by the Chicago Farmers Market Collective.
A pop-up poll early in the event showed that the vast majority of respondents replied a farmers market is “where I get locally grown and produced food.” But as the conversation highlighted, farmers markets serve many other purposes.
Panel moderator Taylor Choy, operations manager at Green City Market, explained:
The Chicago Farmers Market Collective is a volunteer-run group made up of independent farmers, market directors, managers and staff. We all work in partnership together in order to achieve local food access, and work with partners in the area of state and national organizations. Our mission is to advance the local food economy through a network of community-based farmers markets in the city of Chicago. We envision an equitable, sustainable local food system in the Chicago region utilizing these farmers markets, and we're united by our common goal to provide Chicagoans with access to locally grown, nutrient-dense food. And we strive to support our markets, communities, vendors, customers, and one another with resources and knowledge sharing.
The benefits of farmers markets extend to making visits an enjoyable and uplifting experience for shoppers, said Matthew Ruffi, president of the developing Chicago Market Community Co-op and the Uptown Farmers Market it has run since 2021 on the city’s North Side.
At Chicago Market, we look at things like relationships, sustainability, accountability. Joy is even one of our values as well. So we felt like it was such a great fit, to look at a farmers market to allow people to experience… Joy is an interesting value. How do you measure that? When you walk into a farmers market, and you see a kid looking at something, you see these bright colors. If you're a dog-friendly market, we are, and we have this little thing called Pups of Uptown. We take a picture of whatever dogs walk through, post it on Instagram, and all the dog owners that want to come by and try to get the camera person to take a picture of them… We're connecting local, we're doing those things. But that's how you bring joy and farmers markets do that. They bring great food, they bring community, but you get to see people's faces light up, you get to see a farmer that maybe wouldn't have another venue to sell. So these all come together and it really helps us to bring joy to this community.
Community building and appealing to a diverse consumer base were aspects emphasized by Joan Oberndorf, longtime manager of the Andersonville Farmers Market, also on the North Side. “We really focus on making ourselves a space where everyone is welcome,” she said. “The market is very inclusive, Andersonville tends to be a very inclusive neighborhood as well… So I really feel like we're very fortunate.”
Joan also provided detail about how the onset of the COVID crisis in 2020 — which initially delayed the start of Chicago’s outdoor farmers market season — ended up proving the essential nature of farmers markets to a greatly expanded customer base.
It was a really, really chaotic time. But having said that, there were some silver linings for my market. I think it really heightened people's awareness of where their food was coming from. I think it really spot-lit the fact that locally grown food is important and is valuable, in a way for a lot of people that it hadn't been seen previously. We also moved our location to a different street, which actually is a much better fit for us in terms of space. We were on a much smaller, narrower street, and the city would not allow us to open on that street because in 2020, you had to have a certain amount of space between each vendor, you could only allow a certain number of people into the market based on your square footage… I think that people became very nimble. I feel like I pivoted a lot in that season, because if one thing didn't work, we just went on to Plan B or Plan C or Plan D, because really the important thing was getting the food out there and being able to support the vendors. I heard from a lot of people at the end of the season who said that they wouldn't have been able to survive without this channel to be able to sell their food.
Nearly all farmers markets in the Chicago region increase Good Food access by accepting payment with LINK benefits (the Illinois program for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ), and provide matching funds that enable food assistance recipients to buy even more fresh, healthy, locally produced food. But for the Plant Chicago Farmers Market, located in the under-resourced Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side, LINK is absolutely critical to enabling the market to succeed, as market manager Kathleen Valdez explained.
We were able to support a lot of our vendors by providing LINK matching and the Senior Farmers Market Coupons, they really supported a lot of our fresh produce vendors and honey vendors, which we're very proud of… Chicago Commons is a nonprofit organization in the neighborhood, and they provided a lot of relationship building with community members that did not have food access, especially in 2020 and 2021. And they would direct them to our market because they knew that we have LINK matches. We have a lot of local growers in our area, and they would kind of bring a little bit of life to the market by just free cooking demonstrations. Honestly, it's a privilege to be able to offer free cooking demos almost on a daily market day.
These are just snippets of a lengthy, robust conversation. The producers of the Summit will be posting recordings of each of its panels, and I’ll provide a heads up in case you’re interested in viewing the whole program.