Could Supermarkets Hold Farmers Markets?

After years of working with the city's farmers markets, Councilmember Cam Gordon (Ward 2) has rolled out a package of proposed changes to the way such markets are regulated. Southwest's market organizers say they will benefit from the changes, which would require markets to be nonprofit and abide by certain health and safety rules.

"This is a good step forward," said board chair David Nicholson. "This will raise our profile as important public asests."

At their core, the ordinance changes are designed to assuage fears that expanded farmers markets could turn into flea markets and, at the same time, protect local growers from being run out of business by produce wholesalers.

Under proposed changes, produce distributors—wholesale businesses that typically buy from industrial farmers and supply supermarkets and other large businesses—will be barred from selling produce that those local growers have brought to market.

So far, most large produce distributors and retailers haven't run smaller growers out of business in Minneapolis, but Nicholson said he and other farmers market advocates were wary, pointing out that farmers markets represented only a "foot in the door" to peoples' refrigerators for small-scale growers.

"We've been relatively lucky here," he said. 

The biggest impact of the changes, he added, would be to allow markets to advocate to city residents on their own behalf.