Our last
um.
OK,
great.
Um,
so,
hi,
everyone.
Um,
this is our last webinar in the managing
market webinar series for wholesome Wave this summer.
Um,
I'll talk a little bit more at the end.
We're going to have recordings available for all of these,
um,
so I'll explain how to get all of that at the end,
but today we're going to be talking about popping or preserving the magic bubble.
This is
actually a paper that we're also working on,
um,
as with most of these webinars,
so
if you're interested in what you hear about today,
there'll be hopefully more information.
In more context about all of this coming up soon.
Um,
but we're going to be talking about,
you know,
comparing
farmers' market approaches to racial justice.
Um,
yeah,
so let's get started.
Um,
so kind of at a glance,
um,
what we were interested in was we found that farmers'
market participants had really diverse views about the role of identity
and how that shaped the market experience.
And this in turn had a lot of
impact and um
impact and
Um,
in resulting how people believed,
you know,
racial justice policies should be incorporated into market management.
So this is something that we were
interested in looking at when starting this
study.
So first,
you know,
how did we get all this information,
where is all of this coming from?
So as some of you all might know,
we've been working on this project managing markets
for the past few years.
We went to 15 different markets,
farmers' markets around the Southeast in Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Alabama,
and Georgia.
Um,
and you can see
these markets are the little triangles on there and the
circles are the farms that we ended up talking to.
Oh,
I think other people are being admitted.
Um,
OK.
So,
um,
basically what we would do is go to each of these markets,
um,
and volunteer for the day,
and we would,
you know,
help out with anything that was needed,
get kind of the lay of the land of how the market was working.
And do informal interviews with farmers.
And then through these um participant observation days,
we also ended up meeting a lot of the farmers that we later on had interviews with.
We did,
we did 83 interviews.
Um,
and this final piece,
the farmer advisory board meeting,
so the farmer advisory board was a group of farmers,
market managers,
and food system experts
who were helping us figure out which farmers' markets to go to,
um,
which farmers might be good to talk to,
um,
and then also what kinds of questions,
um,
we should be asking.
And they were actually really um helpful in um.
In pushing for us to be more specific
and follow up on this topic.
Um,
so,
I also just want to say I should have said this at the beginning,
I think we asked questions about a lot of different types of identities,
you know,
we asked um how people thought identity in more
like general way impacted their experience at market and people
almost always
first or only responded to kind of race as
identity um being how they answer that question.
And so that's really what brought us to
um
focusing on race in this um presentation.
So,
who did we talk to?
Um,
OK,
so we spoke to majority um white people,
as you can see,
about a little under 80%.
Um,
and then the second,
um,
largest group was black or African American.
Uh,
at a little under 15,
and then multiracial a little under 5,
and Asian and Native American at a little over 1%.
And I want to contextualize that with the ag census.
So as you can see,
compared to the ag census,
our study was actually significantly more diverse than we know the
actual demographics of farmers are,
and we think that the reason because of this was both,
you know,
what kinds of farmers we were talking to,
smaller farmers working at farmers' markets,
um,
but also just where we were,
um,
studying in the Southeast.
So,
why farmers' markets?
Of course,
this entire project was about farmers' markets,
but we found this this specific subject
that these were actually really key and important
spaces to be talking about racial justice.
And this is because they are a focal point in
what we've ended up calling um alternative food systems.
So alternative food systems
are um spaces,
practices,
networks,
or organizations that are somehow different from conventional food systems.
So this is pretty vague,
but I think speaks to the diversity.
of
perspectives and views within this movement.
So,
uh mostly a coalition of groups that have really different ideas
about all of these problems that we have in the conventional food system.
Um,
So,
um,
and one of these main problems is racial injustice.
Um,
and so within alternative food systems,
racial equity has been a focus for many people,
but this is also really fraught because
we found that practitioners and scholars
have been talking about this for Decades that
alternative food systems have often highlighted and centered white voices,
um,
and have inhibited the participation of people of color.
So we're going into this,
um,
topic into this
research,
we had this in mind.
So,
what did we find?
Um,
this first kind of strand of
trends that we found
was this thing that we called the magic bubble.
So this was the,
we found the perception that
racism
Or racial injustice did not impact the market.
And we thought that this was really interesting because often
participants who were talking about this said,
specifically said that,
you know,
they felt that racial injustice was a really
big problem in the United States more generally,
but that
um
that
they thought it was a problem in the United States more generally,
but felt that it was not necessarily actually an issue within their market.
Um,
and so we found also that this had a lot
to do with actually personal relationships that people had.
So,
and I think this is really highlighted by these two quotes
side by side.
So this first market manager is an urban market manager.
They said,
we're in a magic bubble,
other markets have issues with racism,
especially further out in rural areas,
and a rural market manager said,
I don't know if it's because we're so far out,
but everybody talks to one another.
We don't have any issues with racism.
So,
I think from these two quotes,
we can kind of see that it's more of a narrative,
the magic bubble's more of a narrative rather than actually a reality.
And we were finding that this is because.
You know,
both of these managers and a lot of the other participants
talking about this had really great relationships at their market.
Um,
they felt that they were really welcomed
and
um had,
you know,
close and almost family-like relationships um with their market peers.
But we also found that a lot of people talking about this were white.
And that
when you started to talk to farmers of color or people,
white people working more closely with people of color,
that a very different story came to light.
So I want to start first with this story.
This is a white salesperson who works at a farm owned by people of color.
So they said one of the farmers,
if one of the farmers was there,
a white staff person and a white staff person was there alongside them,
nearly 100% of the time,
a customer will direct their question to one of the white people.
And so this is a situation where,
you know,
a
white salesperson is there,
but a farmer of color,
um who might have a lot more knowledge,
um,
the customers are not actually addressing them in any of their
questions.
And so this actually ended up with this farm leaving
the farmers' market and one of the farms we spoke to
who had stopped selling at markets.
Another um black farmer said,
I joke about it all the time.
But the most code switching I've ever had to do in my life is on Saturdays.
And so I think really
contrasting this idea of the magic bubble that says
that,
you know,
race is not something impacting people's experience at market.
I think this quote says,
and these first two quotes
really show that not only is it is it impacting their experience,
but in fact,
in some ways is more impactful than in other spaces.
So,
I also want to talk,
another farmer spoke about the importance of representation.
They said we were the first black farmers at market,
and I just wanted to bring variety to the market.
You'll have some folks who will not go to market.
If they don't see people who look like them,
that's the reality.
So
knowing that,
you know,
it's almost a feedback loop of people feeling uncomfortable and leaving,
um,
but then customers also not coming in that feedback loop.
Um,
continues.
So this last quote,
um,
if you go to redacted cities,
farmers markets right now,
there's very few black farmers.
I've seen that decrease in the years since I've been here,
yet I've also seen organizations supporting urban agriculture decrease.
So there's also the sense
that
the alternative food system is
um moving in a trajectory that's not including.
Um,
the voices of black farmers.
So,
on the other hand,
we also found,
um,
you know,
we had a lot of
um people talking about race not impacting their markets at all,
and a lot of people having the exact opposite experience,
but we found that at the majority of markets,
um,
race was
being,
are trying to be addressed racial.
He was trying to be addressed.
So this looked like three main um practices.
So first,
outreach to racially diverse vendors.
So this would look like,
you know,
asking,
uh,
this looks like sometimes asking a farmer of color,
you know,
do you have any other farmers,
farmer friends who would want to come,
um,
and
Then the second was um reducing barriers to access.
So this was,
you know,
reducing vendor fees for farmers of color sometimes,
and we actually had multiple farmers say that this was really
made the difference and then being able to come to market.
Um,
and then finally,
this implementing
equity trading,
so kind of having like a more classic
um DEI training
um kind of thing.
So while many participants spoke favorably about these efforts,
we found that there was also still backlash,
um,
and
some farmers finding that
these types of policies were I guess negative.
Um,
so this one farmer said,
um you can't include everyone while you
exclude the actual farmers creating your market.
You can't forget about it,
we're in the name.
And so
I thought that this was interesting because
this was a white farmer and it was almost assuming that all the
farmers at the market need the exact same types of things to support
um them being at market.
Um,
and then another
farmer said,
anybody that needs some kind of sensitivity training to go to
a farmer's market should just go to the grocery store.
So also assuming that
this is something,
this was actually a very interesting case of a white farmer
who was growing or selling at a very diverse farmers' market,
and I think to them,
they felt that,
you know,
having diverse people at market meant that the work was done and that,
um,
you know,
just having
Diverse people together meant that race or racism was no longer
um an issue at all.
So what does all of this mean to us?
You know,
I've talked about a lot of different things,
but
Um,
we found that this
meant
that the magic bubble was kind of creating a feedback
loop that was justifying itself and causing people to miss,
but others were having different experiences.
So this kind of meaning that this idea
that a lot of people had that um
racism or racial injustice was not impacting their market,
was in turn making them,
you know,
not even think.
That racial equity policies would might be necessary and
that people might be having very different experiences,
even stand just next to them.
So,
some of our key takeaways were
um that,
you know,
a lot of market managers and organizations are pursuing racial equity practices,
um,
but that this there's both a lot of interest and push back towards these,
and we think that a lot of this has to do with
This idea of the magic bubble and,
you know,
a lot of people thinking that just because they might be having a
really close relationship with all their peers
and they might feel really welcomed,
that that type of
feeling is in turn almost invisibleizing the
experiences of other people at market.
Um,
so I think
a really key takeaway of this whole presentation is that,
you know,
we did hear
that farmers were,
were experiencing
issues of microaggression or all out racism at markets,
and that that is really key to center
and makes it really important to continue talking about
um how identity is impacting experiences.
Um,
and I think it's really key also um to look at this toolkit.
Um,
we are
sorry,
we have,
um,
there's a lot of different people talking about
these issues and one of them is the anti-racist farmers' market tool kit,
um,
which we have the
Um,
can get the information out,
but,
um,
these types
of sources are really talking about ways to continue
thinking about creating markets into more inclusive spaces.
And,
um,
I guess also just for the purpose of going back to this idea of,
you know,
alternative food systems,
looking for
um solutions to change,
um,
you know,
continuing to look for ways
to
improve the food system.
So,
we also um
have
these um
A lot of other webinars from earlier in the year,
um,
which
we will,
I think Hillary and I can tell you more.
Hillary,
I'm not sure if I know exactly when those are coming out,
um,
but yeah,
if anyone has any questions,
um,
be happy.
Dancer.
No question.
Yeah,
uh,
so with the research,
I guess I'm looking at it from an outreach standpoint,
how can we address
or
can it
be,
is there there's a solution to address this issue?
Are there any
uh solutions to address this issue,
would it be a microaggression
in these farmers' pockets?
Mhm.
Yeah,
I mean,
I think the thing that I found was having open communication with farmers.
I think one really
um interesting thing that I hadn't seen in a lot of markets was one farmers,
one farmers' market manager had like office hours that people could come to,
um,
and
I don't know,
I feel like it's Hillary,
if you want to jump in and answer this as well,
um,
we were talking about this and that we feel like it's really complicated,
especially in this climate,
um,
but Hillary,
I don't know if you have any more like specific answers.
Yeah,
um,
Isabel,
just one,
can you go back one slide?
There was Pat was asking in the
chat if we could do that.
Um,
no problem.
Um,
Alicia,
I think that's a great question.
So one of the things that we
found was certainly that there was not that there wasn't a one size fits all
sort of
approach to thinking about how to address racial equity.
So in the paper that we're writing,
we really explore
the ways that
Um,
the,
uh.
Basically that um
that the idea of this like,
is your market a magic bubble
to being like our market is a space to purposely address racial equity issues
varied between markets,
um,
and that.
There was a lot of pushback
at the markets in our sample
that were
openly and proactively trying to position their markets as
like
anti-racist spaces and conduct DEI trainings that were required for all vendors,
etc.
Um,
so we don't have a solution,
but one of the things that we think is
really important is sort of situating and understanding that the
broader context,
um,
of the.
Country and of our discussions about race and racism
right show up in similar kinds of ways and
that the spectrum of beliefs about it show up
in similar kinds of ways at the farmers' market
um
and so for us I think we're really interested in
trying to highlight some of the tools that exist,
um,
like the anti-racist farmers market tool kit to think about
um how people can.
Have conversations at their market
to start to move in the directions that they wanna move
um and that is acknowledging also that there were a
couple of places of markets in our sample that really
were very far on this magic bubble idea
who said like
we're not our market doesn't have any issues with racism and we are not interested in
addressing that as an issue it's not a thing that we talk about and it is not
um yeah we're not.
Gonna do anything about it.
Gotcha.
OK.
Isabel,
you want to take the slides down and we can see if it has,
yeah,
sorry,
OK.
I got another question.
Yeah,
on the on the Internet spectrum.
Is the farm managers,
is there any training for the farm manager besides,
OK,
you managing this market.
And under that training
is DEI or any of these topics addressed like
for the farm manager so,
and I'm thinking it from this perspective.
If we have the information now to say
this is what's going on and everybody.
The living in a delusional land and so to speak,
everybody got their own perspective about what they see.
I'm just curious,
like as a farm manager,
how is the farm manager,
what's the farm manager trained to handle these situations
or was the farm,
what was the farm manager
training on and what was required to help the farmers
that are going through these issues and how the farmer,
farm manager are addressing these issues.
Cause I wanna say issues are arriving,
but what are the steps and what what is taking place in the process?
Like that gap,
that gap.
I love that question,
um,
and I think
like Cat might be able to speak a little bit to some of this.
So what we found Alicia,
is that in our 15 markets,
um,
I think probably,
I think we had
About half of them,
8 of them were market managers that were paid in some way,
um,
and then about half of them were
volunteers or people that got a sort of stipend,
so who were managing their markets very part time.
So the training that was available
to market managers that was as part of their job really varied,
um,
and from some people having like literally no training.
Um,
and no involvement in like a state
organization that sometimes provides training to others
that were salaried employees of an organization
that had various forms of mandatory training.
Um,
additionally across the country there are a few different
programs that provide a certification for farmers' market managers,
and I can't speak to the curriculum of all of those,
but I do know of at least a couple of them
that include modules on thinking about identity at the farmers' market,
but um.
I would say that the variability in the
type of
employment
that a farmer's market manager has
connects very closely to the fact that the training available to them
um is not at all consistent
and definitely.
Does,
does not like.
Not everybody's
experience as a manager would cover
these kinds of topics.
Cat,
I don't know if you wanna add anything to that given your
sectoral knowledge and the training that you all do.
Yeah,
thanks.
I'm with Farmers' Market Pro.
I've been a longtime farmers' market manager,
but we also have an organization called Farmers'
Market Pros where we do some online training,
honestly,
mostly for vendors,
um,
at a conference once a year that is mostly attended by managers.
It's about 300 and some managers.
And what Hillary is saying is very true that
where managers come from.
Is not a degree in farmers' market management.
It's oftentimes they're either entrepreneurial themselves.
They're a farmer or.
Uh,
food vendor that's decided that they need a market in their area.
A lot of times they're connected with community organizations,
either business improvement districts or community associations.
There's another whole group that are uh municipal employees,
sometimes small cities,
typically through their parks department will run a farmer's market.
Um,
there's not consistent training around,
as Hillary mentioned in a number of states,
there is now
kind of a budding,
um,
farmers' market certification.
Set of programs that have developed.
New York has been around for a really long time,
although they're only now changing things was
curriculum that was probably 18 years old.
Um.
Virginia Farmers Market Association has a pretty good certification program.
One of the sort of tragic,
and then the Farmers' Market Coalition has their,
um,
as Isabel's mentioned a couple of times,
the Farmers Market anti-racist Toolkit,
and Sabrina Jalal in particular,
who was one of the
leaders that developed that toolkit,
um,
does some consulting through SAD Consulting.
They just did
a huge program at the Portland Farmers Markets through
Oregon Farmers Market Association and did a lot of training
that was really helpful,
um.
The
really sad thing is a lot of those programs were supported
by farmers' market promotion program federal grants through the USDA.
The ones that mentioned diversity training or equity
were summarily canceled in January.
Many of them lost funding that had already been contracted.
It simply disappeared,
and people were warned this year that if they included that type of word
in their grant proposals,
they likely would not get another grant for 2025,
2026.
Um,
so we're certainly
Obviously,
that's a reflection of the larger,
um,
situation in America right now.
It's not just in farmers' markets,
but it's making it more challenging to
continue some of these programs that had really
just started to build up some strength right before COVID.
COVID set it back a little bit because,
obviously,
because,
because there are some other things that we had to deal with as well,
and analog farmers markets were threatened and even whether
or not they could operate for a while.
But coming back,
it was really strong.
And then this,
um,
this year,
there's been some big blows to it.
I,
we certainly have not
given up,
but,
um,
we're having to work our way around
anybody who's,
we don't fund through grants,
my organization,
we're,
we're entirely self-funded.
So
it hasn't been an issue for us.
We're still gonna have a big,
um,
DEI section of,
of,
uh,
Programs at our conference in March,
we've started a step stack and we're
talking about it there,
but I know that a lot of the organizations that were doing that
work have really been impacted by the changes to FMPP funding available.
That's good news and bad news right there.
Thanks,
Kat.
Thank you.
Sure.
It is something to be aware of.
I actually,
I'm in Philly half the time in San Diego half the time,
and in my neighborhood
um
of South Philly,
we started a market last year,
it's doing really well,
um.
Considering it's a new market,
but it's doing pretty well,
but we very purposely called it a community market and not a farmer's market
because of the perception that farmers' markets are white spaces,
and we have farmers there and we are technically
now a farmers' market through the state of Pennsylvania,
but we're still calling at the Point Breeze Community Market,
um,
precisely because there are long lasting
impressions that markets are white spaces,
even though there's a lot of
really wonderful,
very specifically black farmers' markets,
North Carolina,
um,
has a great
Of the black farmers' market in North Carolina,
they go between Raleigh and Durham,
um,
and some other markets,
the same prosperity market in LA
that are very specifically designed as black spaces.
Um,
but we really,
we found that the community market name actually was less
kind of intimidating.
It had less of a gentrification flag,
um,
and it's been
It's actually turned out to be a wonderful
place for kind of everybody in the neighborhood,
which is great.
That's so interesting,
Kat,
and also would get around to this tension that came up in our research of farmers,
particularly white farmers,
saying,
hey,
you know,
we're all struggling as
small scale farmers and so I don't understand why there's a special program.
For
farmers of color to have reduced vendor fees or something like that,
right?
If it's a farmer's market.
So that's a.
Yeah,
which is,
of course,
the whole white thing of.
Yeah,
we've always,
we've been advantaged for many,
many,
many generations.
So yes,
we need to,
to kind of reach our hands down and lift other people up that have been
specifically and intentionally disadvantaged.
But we're very conscious of
trying to make sure that our vendor mix and farmer mix reflects the,
the colors in our neighborhood.
Mhm.
Um,
well,
I was able to drop,
so we,
uh,
here in the chat,
um,
I dropped the link to the Arizona State University
keep site,
um,
where we are cataloging everything from both this project and a farm,
a project that we finished with the agricultural marketing service
a couple of years ago about farmers market organization.
So this doesn't yet have everything but over the next
um 5 weeks or so we'll be uploading
the additional
um
recordings of the other webinars that were done for this project and also
um finishing briefs about that cover the findings of each webinar
basically
um so those will all be available for anyone and we are of
course delighted to answer any questions and continue to follow up with folks.
I have one last question.
Uh,
yeah,
is it a,
a website that,
uh,
if you were a farmer's market manager that you
can go to the register for these trainings,
can you put that in the chat box?
Yeah.
So it is basically what it will be Alicia is it's an open website,
um,
where everything will be archived.
So and all available for under a Creative Commons license for people to use,
um,
as they see fit.
Um,
so that,
um,
so all of those will be there.
We have been approached and collaborated a little bit with
the Michigan Farmers Market Association to include some of this,
um,
in their farmers market manager training but are
of course delighted to continue to do that,
um,
and.
Because the academic world is slower
than everything
else,
um,
hopefully over the course of the next 12 months we'll have some of these articles,
um,
that will come out in academic journals
that provide even more detail
about the,
um,
about the topics that we have covered this summer.
And many thanks to Scott,
who is here,
um,
who
was working on this project,
um,
and
left for a new job in fall of 2024.
But we are excited to see you,
Scott,
and your impact on this project has been very robust.
Thanks.
Yeah,
happy to be here.
Good job,
Isabel,
to see all of this.
Yeah.
Mhm,
mhm.
And Alicia was on our farmer advisory board.
So great.
No.
Mm.
Anyone else have any questions or comments that they'd like to add?
Thank you
for coming.
I really appreciate.
Thank you for sharing your information.
Very informative,
very,
very informative.
We'll also have briefs coming out as well,
um,
which will have a lot of this information.
Um,
those will be coming out pretty soon,
I think.
Hillary?
Yeah,
should be by the end of October.
Great.
Yeah,
awesome.
Thank you so much for posting those.
Yeah,
and Hillary,
let me ask you this,
is that publication that you put in the uh chat,
has it already been printed out or no?
The Farmers Market Coalition,
the anti-racist Farmers Market toolkitt came out several years ago,
um,
so that one's available and
includes just a lot of fantastic information.
Um,
so that one is already published and then ours,
any ones that are on the website.
Um,
on this ASU.edu site that I put in there are um.
Also are available and ready to be used,
so.
Wonderful.
Well,
thanks so much,
everyone.
Thanks.