A Love Letter to the Farmer's Market
Sweet Cultivator of Community
Every saturday between May and October, a sea of people floods downtown. The resulting mixture comprises of a wide range of backgrounds, political views, education levels, races, gender identities, and every type of difference one could conjure in an article about third places.
Such a diverse group of people means we get a diverse set of produce. Maybe you just love fresh produce during the summer, and that’s why you go to the market, especially if you live in a district that’s considered a food desert by the Missouri government. But I believe there’s a special draw to a farmer’s market (and downtown) you don’t find anywhere else.
I’ve written about Downtown Cape’s unique draw before, but today, I want to talk about something more specific: Farmer’s markets and street markets.
This isn’t an essay to convince you to hang out at the farmer’s market. Since you clicked on this blog, it’s likely you are already the type of person who plans their weekends around the market. Rather, I want to talk about the underlying magnetic attaction of markets any why they’re important for communities.
Knowing where your food comes from is empowering.
More often than not, the friendly faces of the market belong to honest, hard-working farmers who grow food because they love it. During times when food insecurity is a looming threat, it eases my anxiety to get to know the people who grow my food. But in addition, the money spent at a farmer’s market stays local.
In my city, Old Town Cape runs a weekly farmer’s market called the Downtown Riverfront Market. Liz Haynes, Old Town Cape’s Executive Director, had this to say when I asked her about the market.
The market serves as a source of food for the region, offering fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, breads, and baked goods as well as handmade artisan arts and crafts. In addition, the market supports the vendors’ livelihoods.
Harkening back to food insecurity, it is not a stretch to say that money spent at the market doesn’t an out-of-state CEO’s pockets (perhaps we can go over Monsanto’s iron grip on the seed industry another time). Rather, the money farmers make selling their produce in-town supports their livlihoods and allows them to grow more produce, as Liz said. In general, local businesses tend to spend their money in-town at other local businesses, stimulating the local economy. Not only that, but there are some shops who actually got their start at the farmer’s market. Because of the low barrier to entry, anyone with great food, crafts and other products can more easily gain a foothold in the area, as Liz iterated for me:
[The market gives vendors] a venue to build clientele and perfect their merchandising and branding. There are quite a few brick and mortar businesses in downtown Cape and Jackson which had their start at the market including Red Banner, Green’s Garden, BonBon’s, and Glass Gardens by Stacy.
But, above all of this, I think the most important part about the farmer’s market doesn’t have as much to do with the food.
It’s one of the only times and places where the public regularly gather without cars.
Walkable infrastructure abounds, and its importance cannot be understanted. The market in my city is situated downtown, and here one doesn’t need a car to go from stand-to-stand or business-to-business. In fact, most people who go to the market end up going other places too. The Saturdays when the farmer’s market is in season has, anecdotally, some of the highest levels of economic activity of the year in downtown Cape. Liz had another elegant response to this spike in activity during the market when I asked her about it:
There is absolutely a correlation between increased foot traffic and revenue at downtown businesses during the market … The market absolutely fulfills that goal, as can be witnessed when one visits downtown Cape on any Saturday morning during the market season and struggles to find parking spots. We routinely hear from downtown businesses that they see significantly more business during market days.
In my city, the market takes place atop one of the largest parking lots downtown, every single week; and despite the lack of parking, businesses still thrive.
After I finally noticed this, I understood exactly why I love the farmer’s market so much.
People, inherently, love walkable areas.
The biggest draws to places like Disneyland, The Landing in Branson, MO, Times Square, NY, and walkable streets all over the world is how people can freely walk around and interact. Cape’s Fall Festival, every year, shuts down an entire street and draws hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
Street markets, open-air events, parks, school hallways, sidewalk cafes, libraries and even barber shops are considered Third Places - places where you interact with others outside of work, home, and commuting. These places are crucial to stitching together a tight-knit community fabric. They give people chances to exist freely, exchange ideas and form new friendships.
But supporting such infrastructure, at least in the United States, has become increasingly more difficult in the past 70 to 80 years. Cars are not small and must be stored somewhere while not in use, so it’s crucial to support alternative forms of transportation to downtown, from places where people live. A few examples, as I’ve written about before, are protected bike lines, more mixed-use development, and robust public transportation.
When protected bike lanes are added to otherwise dangerous streets, it shows that biking is a viable form of transportation to casual riders, not just a convenient piece of infrastructure for professional cyclists.
Such pedestrian-friendly infrastructure exists in cities all over the world, making clean, pollution-free, navigable downtowns. Such places, including Cape Girardeau, lie as a base upon which the farmer’s markets and street markets of the world build themselves. They draw in large, friendly crowds year-after-year and week-after-week, and their importance cannot be understated - not just a place to combat food insecurity, but also as a place to exchange ideas and make new connections.
At least for now, our lovely farmer’s market is over for the year. I’m thankful every week for living in a city that supports its existence, because it served as the groundwork for important connections I’ve made in the area. Even though it’s over, because of its essence, I’m not at a loss for how to fill my Saturdays. Perhaps next Saturday morning, I’ll find myself at an art gallery just a block away.