City steps into ongoing farmers’ market dispute
The Peterborough Farmers’ Market is a wonderful place to be on a Saturday morning. Colourful, aromatic, bustling and communal, it has served as an ongoing reminder of our agricultural bounty and enterprise since 1825. It is consistently popular, a state reinforced by a fashionable affection for food that is natural, fresh and local. It is one of the few regular meeting places of urban and rural communities, creating and reinforcing important cultural connections and reminding us of a heritage from which we have all benefitted.
The Peterborough and District Farmers’ Market Association (PDFMA) is a private non-profit organization, one of seven farmers’ markets in the region. Like any organization that has been around for nearly two centuries, it has had its share of disputes, the most recent being the infighting between two groups: local farmers who grow and sell their own food; and the resellers of products that are purchased elsewhere and trucked to the market ... typically from the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto. This is a matter that has been well reported; it pits the benefits of free enterprise against the benefits of authenticity and local preference.
This year, that infighting has risen sharply to the surface. Polarization has resulted in the banning of some vendors and individuals from the market; the use of security guards; and allegations of arbitrary and surreptitious management and governance activities. CBC TV has taken note and is preparing its own inquiry for national broadcast. A former PDFMA president recently told a public meeting that “the board seems to be totally rogue ... there are a number of people on that board who are looking out for one constituency only ... those are the resellers.”
The City of Peterborough is the PDFMA landlord. This spring, Mayor Daryl Bennett wrote to a vendor indicating that “while the city doesn’t run the farmers’ market, it could choose to stop renting property to the farmers’ market ... or enter into a request for proposals process to seek competitive bids on the operation of a farmers’ market on that property.” He added that “city staff will be reviewing the lease arrangement with the tenant after this summer season”... and “that could include a review of the organization’s procedural bylaws.” CAO Alan Seabrooke wrote to the vice-president of the PDFMA advising her similarly. The threat of a change to the operator of the market in order to achieve operational improvements is a smart strategy that should bring about results.
As the city undertakes its review, it should look into the improvement of PDFMA business practices including procedures for independent auditing; the timely distribution to vendors of an annual report and board minutes; the status of a criminal record as a bar to board membership; opening the annual general meeting to public observers; and the creation of a customer advisory body.
As to the dispute between local growers and resellers, the PDFMA Market Vendor Regulations brochure includes a mission of “a non-profit organization of vendors wishing to sell their homegrown and locally produced products and produce to the local public.” It also indicates that “we are a farmers’ market – new vendors effective in 2004 must grow/produce 100% of items sold.” The PDFMA web site repeats this requirement. These declarations do not appear to have been put into consistent practice.
As I see it, both local growers and resellers should be permitted at the market in accordance with a percentile formula favourable to local growers. With customer choice and truth in advertising as guideposts, a good solution is mandatory and visible stall signage that identifies the origin of all products for sale.