Current Brentwood mayor, Pat Kelly, has said he was interested in starting a Brentwood farmers market, and some in the community support the idea, but an organizer and some vendors say there are already too many in the area for all of them to be successful.
Deb Henderson, a St. Louis area farmers market organizer, and current market master of the Mid-county Market in University City, encourages a municipality that wants its own market to partner with one that’s already established.
“Everybody loves the idea of their own little community having a farmers market, but quite honestly, there are not enough farmers to go around,” she said Thursday in an interview in Maplewood at Stone Spiral Coffee.
She said too many markets divides the customer base. “Farmers markets are in the news so people think everybody goes to them, but not everybody in that crowd is spending money.”
She said a community can create a farmers market and throw a lot of money at it and say they have a farmers market, “but are the farmers really benefiting from it? When you add farmers to the equation, and their economic viability, are we really supporting them?”
She said last year Clayton spent more than $130,000 on theirs, and it closed early. She was the market manager there, and went to the Mid-county Market in University City when it moved there.
Joy Stinger has been selling her honey, Stinger’s Honey, for 13 years, beginning in Clayton.
“I made up to $800 in a market my first year, which was pretty spectacular,” she said. She said now it’s around $200 to $300. “It’s changed dramatically. And the market prices went up too.”
Jessica Jawor, manager at Great Harvest Bread Maplewood (previously Olivette) has sold bread at the Ferguson farmers market for seven years. She said even before the events of last summer the market was declining.
“Definitely started to see a decline as we started seeing more markets pop up,” she said. “People stick in their own little areas, and there’s not enough people in those areas to support the vendors. It’s really a big thing of over-saturating the market—too much of a good thing.”
Henderson started a non-profit, The Midwest Association of Farmers Markets, to educate communities that may want to create a farmers market, and if they already have one, how to be a good steward of the market, and to create incubation opportunities.
“Just because you have the resources and 30 dedicated people in your community, that’s not enough for a farmers market,” she said.
Richard S., that’s a really good point. As far as I know, no houses have been torn down to make way for a farmer’s market.
And also there are I don’t know how many mattress stores in the area, including one on Hanley and 2 (or maybe 3?) on Brentwood Blvd. There are also mattresses for sale I’m sure in the Galleria.
HMMM….too many Farmer’s Markets is a bad thing, but three Big Box Home Improvement stores within a stone’s throw of each other is just fine. Certainly no market saturation there, right?