To continue George's line of thought:
Why don't the governments of Ithaca and Tompkins County build and run
farmers markets? It is shameful that the city extracts rent from Ithaca
Farmers Market for the use of public property, and made us build and
maintain our own structure and grounds, costs that made the overhead
prohibitive for many farmers to sell at the market. To help defray these
costs we were forced to bring more money in by turning the market into a
fast food and arts and crafts touristic mini-mall. This displaces even
more farmers from what should be a truly farmers market, and is totally
unnecessary, as the examples from PA demonstrate. We don't even have to
go out of state to get good models of what to do here. Rochester and
Syracuse still have public city-run markets that are just for farmers, or
were, the last time I saw them. Of course they are relics of another age,
and like Ithaca Farmers Market serve only a tiny fraction of the public
in these cities. But as George points out, they are good models to build
on.
We need to advance a politics of food that is grounded in the idea that
its retail provision is an essential public service, rightfully included
in the public sector of the local economy, like street and bridges, and
not something that a farmer class that monopoly capital has reduced to
the equivalent of serfdom must bootstrap on their own.
I realize that I am somewhat preaching to the choir here, but I hope that
this forum is broad enough that these ideas will be new to some, and
provoke thought and action.
Karl North
Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
www.geocities.com/northsheep/
"Mother Nature never farms without animals" - Albert Howard
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:05:07 -0700 (PDT) George Frantz
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> Why assume the continued dependence on the WalMart/Wegman's
> centralized procurement/distribution system model?
>
> There are a number of cities in Pennsylvania that have since
> colonial times operated publicly-owned central markets where
> individual stalls are leased to small-time local producers of food
> and and fiber.
>
> The City-owned Central Market in Lancaster has been incredibly
> successful in staving off the chain supermarkets in that city, while
> providing residents a variety of produce, baked goods, meats and
> seafood at competitive prices from over 100 vendors who lease stalls
> in the building. Because of its presence downtown just about every
> office has a full-size refridgerator and downtown office workers
> extend their Tuesday and Friday lunch hours to do their food
> shopping.
>
> The Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia serves the same
> purpose.
>
> Another possible model for local procurement would be the Co-op
> Supermarket in Greenbelt, Maryland. Established in the late 1930s
> as part of the overall Roosevelt New Deal to create a new model for
> cities in the Uited States, the Co-op continues to be a
> full-service, independent, cooperative owned supermarket in downtown
> Greenbelt.
>
> We have to look at revamping the entire system, top-down, in a
> manner that ensures quality affordable food for all incomes, and an
> equitable return on labor and investment for our farmers. That
> includes viable alternatives to Wegmans and WalMart.
>
> George Frantz
>
>
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