Saturday market has lost the public’s trust

Farmers’ markets operate on an unusual business model. The vendors who rent booths at weekly markets depend on the grassroots bond they form with their customers – they offer something fresh and local, and the customers choose to buy there rather than at the supermarket. Going to market, for some, is a family tradition, often for generations. Trust is built. Relationships form. This is a good thing.

So when a market that has cultivated that trust for more than 190 years blows it, those same customers take it personally.

The Peterborough Farmers' Market, which runs year-round on Saturdays at Morrow Park, is in disarray. The reasons are many, and in dispute, but the ill will at the market has spread out into the community. Lawyers were hired. Accusations flew, and rumours swirled, and blame assigned. Social media hasn't helped, with rumours amplified and facts distorted.

This all began with a call last year for a change in corporate governance from a group of local vendors, all of whom are no longer selling at the market. The city, which leases the land to the non-profit market board, started paying attention to the conflict, and outside farm groups talked about taking over the space.

There’s a major issue of trust involved here. For years, some vendors have been accused of passing off produce from the Ontario Food Terminal as their own, and the market board has been accused of turning a blind eye. This claim was dismissed for years, until the CBC's Marketplace took a hidden camera into the market last year. One vendor was filmed telling people his produce was locally grown, even after those same cameras followed him as he loaded produce at the Toronto terminal, then unloaded it into bushel baskets at the market and claimed it had been grown in this area.

Real farmers resent this. Customers don't like being tricked, and many believed this was no isolated incident.

There has been no resolution, Some supporters of the market board argue that the dissenters used harassment and intimidation to try to force change. Others accuse the board supporters of the same thing. It's clear there's bad blood, and when local growers are ousted while the person who was caught lying to customers on camera is still there … well, it's understandable why some customers have stopped trusting the market.

The board's attempt to placate them – ambiguous new signage identifying “growers,” “producers” and “supporters,” isn't enough. This market needs clarity, transparency, simplicity and, most of all, honesty.

But that hasn't happened, months after the deception was revealed and the so-called “rebel vendors” went public with their concerns. Instead, customers heard about gag orders, evictions and accusations, with the market board largely silent on the problem.

Customers are angry, but a boycott of the market is the wrong approach. There are dozens of honest local vendors at the market who aren't part of the dispute; They don't deserve to lose business over the actions of others, whichever side they're on.

Everyone involved, on both sides, should think about the importance of community and transparency. There's still time to fix the issues, but that time is running out. Many customers have lost the trust in their market, trust built over decades. Without that, no farmers' market can succeed.