• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Farmers Market Behind the Market Sells to Retailers, Wholesalers

Posted on: Saturday, 12 November 2005, 03:02 CST

By Dudley Price, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Nov. 12--RALEIGH -- By the time the State Farmers Market opens at 8 a.m., some of the cheapest produce has already been sold -- and the farmers who sold it are headed back home.

Each Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, they show up in their pickup trucks and vans while it's still dark outside, park in the lot beside the "farmers' shed" that most people identify with the market and start selling. Consider it the farmers' market behind the farmers' market.

"I'd say 75 percent of the general public doesn't know about it," said market manager Ronnie Best. "They pull in at 3 a.m. and they're gone by 4:30 or 5 in the morning. If they're still there at 8 a.m., they haven't had a good day."

These farmers sell to retail customers, wholesalers such as Ford's Produce Co. and R&H Produce that supply restaurants and grocers, and to the farmers who have permanent stalls in the market's "farmers' line" who need to augment their own selection. After all, a stall that is selling only collards isn't as big a draw as one that can boast collards, field tomatoes and 'cukes. This time of year, with many fields empty of all but the gleanings, the early morning market is especially important, helping keep the stalls full of grapes, watermelons, greens, squash and tomatoes.

A.B. Swindell, a state senator from Nashville, N.C., probably spoke for many market visitors when he took his mother to the market last week.

"My first thought was 'Where do they get all this stuff?' " Swindell said, pointing to the tables piled with produce.

Those early-bird wholesalers -- who may have hothouses, larger fields or better irrigation systems -- are his answer.

Farmers selling from the stalls are required to grow at least 51 percent of what they sell. And most say that they grow what they're selling.

While the wholesale prices are cheap, they don't always set the retail prices in the stall. On Thursday, for example, field tomatoes were selling for 64 cents a pound -- provided you bought a 25-pound box. In the stalls, the price was more like $1.25 a pound. Prices were similar throughout the market. Mostly, those rates are set by competition between the farmers who have permanent stands, said farmers and market officials.

"They watch each other like hawks," Best said. "It's very competitive. They've all got the same stuff and they've all got the same audience," he said, referring to customers.

Besides helping keep farmers booths piled high with vegetables, the farmers who sell wholesale supply hundreds of roadside vendors in Eastern North Carolina and Virginia.

"What are these 'maters running?" asked Joe Merrell, a Carteret County farmer who runs a produce stand on N.C. 101 outside Beaufort and supplies a half-dozen restaurants. He was at the market at 5 a.m. Thursday buying cases of tomatoes, greens, squash and cucumbers, which growers said can't be found in fields Down East now. "It's the only close place you'll get fresh produce."

Merrell makes the trip at least once a week. Growers sold him more than 100 cases of produce and said he'd be able to make a profit of about $4 per box.

Only six farmers were selling wholesale produce Thursday. In summer months, when crops such as corn and cantaloupes come in, the number of wholesale vendors can swell to 75, market officials said. Demand for space is so tight, farmers selling wholesale start arriving shortly after midnight.

For the state's farmers, the market is one of a few places left to sell their produce, because large supermarket chains increasingly are filling stores from their own warehouses, and big distribution companies are supplying restaurants.

Decades ago, farmers could sell directly to grocers and restaurants but now big corporations supply most of the produce.

Add rising production costs and competition from large farms and growers in other countries that keeps prices -- and profits -- low and it's easy to see why fewer people are taking up farming, said Robbie Cox, a Goldsboro farmer.

"This year, there are 30 percent fewer on the line. The farmers are gone," said Cox, 59, who has sold at the early-morning market for 30 years. Some "died out but the main reason is price. If you can't raise it, pick it and make a profit, you can't do it."

Last year there were 52,000 farms in North Carolina, down nearly 29 percent from 1982, a decrease of 5,000 farms since 2000, according to the state Department of Agriculture.

James W. "Bill" Walker, a Randolph County farmer who has sold peppers he raises on his farm near Asheboro for the past eight years, said this is his last year making the early-morning trip to sell wholesale produce. "Costs have gone up so much I can't make anything wholesaling any more," said Walker, 55, who plans to try a retail produce booth in Greensboro.

Ronnie Corbin, night gateman at the market, said falling demand for small farmers' produce since 2000 has eliminated jobs for about 40 haulers -- independent small truckers -- who carried North Carolina produce to retailers and restaurants as far away as Maryland's Eastern Shore.

"This is the last hurrah for the small farmer," Corbin said. "They have no other outlet to distribute their produce."

MARKET MANAGER IS VEGGIE POLICEMAN

Ronnie Best's title is manager of the State Farmers Market, but he also doubles as the potato police.

Vendors in the farmers' shed are supposed to sell only North Carolina-grown produce. Last week, Best was looking out his office window when he spotted a vendor with two cases of questionable spuds in the back of a pickup. Best suspected the potatoes had actually been grown somewhere else -- like Iowa -- and that the vendor was taking them to the retail area to sell as North Carolina's finest.

Turns out the vendor actually had grown the potatoes, and no penalty was given, but the incident illustrates what officials describe as a never-ending effort to ensure produce sold as North Carolina produce was grown in the state.

"I'm sure something gets snuck in," said Best, market manager since 2000. "I've caught them sneaking stuff in."

This spring, two vendors were warned they could be forced off the market sales floor after Best found them loading up out-of-state produce to sell in the shed reserved for North Carolina products.

"There's no way to keep up with it 100 percent," Best said. "[But] 95 percent is grown in North Carolina."

The designation is important because being locally grown -- and fresh -- is a key selling point.

Farmers selling produce in the "N.C. only" shed must sign forms each year stating which crops they grow and plan to sell. Their local cooperative extension agent also must sign the forms. Best said he visits each farm once or twice a year to check on the crops and visits stalls at the market daily.

Farmers are required to grow 51 percent of what they sell. Rules allow farmers who sell at the market to buy and resell produce from other farmers, as long as that produce is grown in-state and those farmers and their extension agents also have signed the forms.

--By Dudley Price

AT THE MARKET

The State Farmers Market is a sprawling, 75-acre breadbasket for the eastern half of North Carolina, supplying produce from local farmers and the world to thousands of restaurants, groceries, roadside stands and institutions. Every day, between 50 and 100 tractor trailers bring in everything from potatoes grown on Prince Edward Island, Canada, to Mexican desert cactus -- often used in ethnic foods -- that will be sold to restaurants and stores.

Here are some market statistics:

--Full-time companies: 29

--Number of workers: 500

--Number of seasonal growers: About 150

--Warehouses and roofed space: 210,000 square feet

--2004 visitors: 2.94 million

--Crates, cartons, bushels, etc., delivered in 2004: wholesale houses, 5.8 million; farmers' stands, 1.3 million

SAMPLING OF 2004 SALES:

--Cantaloupes: 552,624

--Watermelons: 355,512

--Christmas trees: 7,909

--Pounds of pecans: 5,366

--Bunches of turnips: 3,020

Source: State Farmers Market

-----

To see more of The News & Observer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsobserver.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The News & Observer

More News in this Category