New Farmers Market Opens in Sarasota

In case you guys didn't catch this in the paper on Friday thought it was worthy of sending out. Baby steps in the right direction! Yay!

- Dill

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New Farmers Market Opens in Sarasota

Source: Web Site http://www.heraldtrib...

Getting farmers market food to stores' shelves
By Eric Ernst <eric.ernst@heraldtribune.com>

Published: Friday, October 2, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.

In what may represent the tip of the iceberg, a new weekly farmers market
opens from dawn to dusk Nov. 4 at the Phillippi Estate Park off U.S. 41 in
Sarasota. Every Wednesday, area farmers will come with their products, and
customers will carry home fresh fruits and vegetables grown just miles from
their homes.

Farmers markets are nothing new. Sarasota and Venice already host them on
Saturdays.

What's new is the heady realization that if enough individuals, restaurants
and institutions buy their food from area growers we could have the makings
of an industry that would help wean the local economy from its unhealthy
dependence on construction and population growth.

We could grow better without growing bigger.

All it would entail is a slight shift in buying habits and a few investments
to make the shift easy for us.

The attributes of locally grown foods from small farms have been well
documented. Fresh produce tastes better than megastore offerings that have
been shipped 1,500 miles, the average distance most food travels before it
reaches our tables. That inefficiency also wastes gas.

Small farms that rotate crops for a year-round local market use fewer
pesticides and fertilizers, a plus for our bodies as well as the
environment. Local food sales and consumption reduce the risk of widespread
contamination, such as the country experienced recently with spinach
production.

Creating a local market for homegrown food also creates jobs -- hundreds,
maybe thousands, of them, because this is labor-intensive. Many jobs come on
the farm, but many more come with middleman industries. Someone has to
store, package and arrange sales to big buyers such as supermarket chains,
hospitals and the public schools.

In 2006, a study commissioned by the Cooperative Extension Service
identified 371 farms in Sarasota County. Researchers got that number from a
2002 agricultural census showing 23 farms of more than 1,000 acres and 255
of fewer than 50 acres.

The potential is here, if we can fit all the pieces together so farmers know
what crops to grow and how many, and so they have a dependable market and
expectations of profit.

This is doable, and cities and counties across the country are doing it. In
Abingdon, Va., for instance, the Appalachian Sustainable Development Project
spent $500,000 for a packing house and three refrigerator trucks. The
investment enabled local farmers to put 75 meat, egg and produce items on
the shelves of 600 supermarkets.

The 2006 study found that Sarasotans spend $797 million on food each year,
most of it from outside the region. Shifting only 5 percent of that to
buying directly from farmers would more than double the $34 million in crops
and livestock now produced by Sarasota County farms.