Local or not? Vendor won’t say
As concerns are raised about resellers at the Peterborough Farmers’ Market, a farmer who runs one of the largest produce stalls in the Saturday farmers’ market says he grows food that he sells, and that his family owns multiple farms – but he won’t say where Brent Kent Farms is located.
“I’m not giving away all my secrets,” said a man who would only identify himself as Mr. Kent Sr. (the Peterborough Farmers’ Market website identifies him, in a vendor photograph, as Brent Kent Sr., and other sellers at his stall called him Kent Sr.)
After challenging the accuracy of previous Examiner reports, he refused the opportunity to set the record straight if necessary. “How do you get rid of a reporter who’s harassing you?” he replied after being asked a few questions.
Shoppers are told exactly where the food comes from when they ask, he said – but, he said, he won’t tell journalists.
“All my customers ask me where the food is grown and I tell them,” Kent said. “I don’t tell reporters who only report 50 per cent of the truth.”
Kent would only say that the apples came from his son-in-law’s farm, and the corn came from his daughter’s field. He wouldn’t say where those farms are located.
Brent Kent Farms operates produce stalls in both Lindsay and Peterborough markets, according to the local farmers’ market website. The site states they’re managed by Brent Kent Jr. and his father.
But the Peterborough Farmers’ Market website doesn’t give any address for any farm where the Kents’ food is grown. Neither does the website for Brent Kent Farms.
Other vendors of the Saturday farmers’ market publish the location of their farms, both on their own websites and on the farmers’ market website.
Chick-a-biddy Acres, for instance, has a stall in the farmers’ market. On the market’s website, they give their farm address in Trent Hills; their own website shows photos of the farm. It’s the same for McLean and Buckhorn Berry Farms in Buckhorn.
Not so for Brent Kent Farms: on the Peterborough Farmers’ Market website, it says the “Kent Farms Farmers’ Market business” has been running since 1969. But there’s no mention of any particular farm where the food is grown, and no farm photos.
Local lawyer John Dunn says the Peterborough farmers’ market is being dominated by re-sellers: people who buy their produce from farmers or from the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto and then sell it at the market without indicating that they haven’t grown it themselves.
Dunn calls them “dress-up farmers” – people who come to the market to sell produce but don’t actually farm at all.
Meanwhile the farmers’ market website promotes the fruit and vegetables sold there as homegrown.
Cindy Hope, the president of the farmers’ market, did not respond to requests for comment.
Dunn did a title search for Kent farms. He found two farm properties owned by the family (coowned by Brent Kent Sr., Jr., or by Robert Kent, the first generation of three mentioned on the Kent Farms website).
Dunn found one Kent farm in Orono, and another in Lindsay.
Next, Dunn searched Google for aerial photos of the properties. The aerial photos were shared with The Examiner: they show no obvious farm fields, orchards or greenhouses.
Yet the Kent stall offers a full array of produce, from corn to tomatoes and apples.
When asked exactly how much of the food he grows himself, Kent wasn’t specific. “We grow lots of stuff,” he said. As for the Google aerial images, Kent doesn’t think they mean much.
They don’t tell the whole story: Kent says he has a large family, and together they own seven farms (not just two).
“We have several farms. We have a lot of people in our family,” he said. “You don’t know how many people we have in our family.”
At his stall, Kent has a large photo posted of his small grandchildren playing amid the cornstalks at his daughter’s farm; that’s where the corn comes from, he says.
Still, he won’t say where that farm – or any of the other farms where he gets produce – is located. He won’t even give a rough idea; he doesn’t mention the name of a nearby town, for example.
“I don’t give away my business practices,” he said.
Meanwhile, the CBC television show Marketplace is reportedly preparing a piece on Kent Farms and their business practices. When asked about that, Kent had nothing to say.
“I can’t talk about that – it’s in litigation right now,” he said, although he suggested that a TV reporter visited his orchard without permission. He wouldn’t name his lawyers.
On Saturday, The Examiner reported Dunn’s claims to having been asked to leave the farmer’s market by police because after taking photos of stalls. Dunn later received a letter from Hope saying he was banned from the market for life.
If the market has rules against taking photos, they aren’t being enacted consistently: an Examiner photographer took photos on Saturday, and wasn’t asked to leave.
Kent disputes that story. He says Dunn wasn’t asked to leave because he was taking photos-he was asked to leave by police because he assaulted a vendor.
“Get the truth on Mr. Dunn – then I’ll talk to you,” Kent told The Examiner.
But Dunn says he wasn’t charged by police, and he didn’t assault anyone: he put out a hand to keep a woman at bay as she walked briskly and angrily up to him, that Saturday in May.
That woman, Melanie Stapleton, said in an interview Saturday at her stall that she was indeed assaulted.
She said Dunn grabbed her arm after she asked him to stop taking photos in front of her stall. Stapleton says her daughters – who were at the stall – had also asked him to stop photographing them.
Dunn says he wasn’t photographing the daughters – he was taking pictures of stalls to support his contention that the market is dominated by resellers.
But Stapleton says she’s not a reseller: she says she grows “the majority” of the produce she sells.
The food she doesn’t grow – such as blueberries and strawberries – are grown by friends of hers, and she tells her customers that.
That’s how farmers’ markets operate, she said: farmers sell for one another.
“We all work together – that’s what farmers do,” she said. “That’s what you should be writing – not the negative talk.”