Looking to nurture diversity
Schenectady Greenmarket seeks people of color
When Himanee Guptacarlson glances around the Schenectady Greenmarket, she sees a “wonderful and caring community.”
Yet the lack of people who look like her can be discomfiting.
“It does feel a little bit isolating at times,” said Guptacarlson, co-owner of Squash Villa Farm in Schaghticoke. “It’s been very, very difficult in the last several years to find many other vendors of color — and even customers.”
Gupta-carlson, who owns Squash Villa with her husband, is among the few vendors of color at Schenectady Greenmarket, just four or five out of 60 total.
Management wants to change that. A key focus as the market prepares for the spring
is attracting a more diverse vendor base and better engaging with communities of color.
“We want to make it a space for Black and brown folks to have a space at the market,” said Cheryl Wilby, market manager. The Greenmarket is housed at Proctors from December to April and moves to the streets around City Hall the rest of the time.
Diversifying the space isn’t about diversity for diversity’s sake and riding the tailwinds of the ongoing national discussion on race, but rather has real and tangible impacts.
For one, a mostly white space can dissuade people of color from visiting.
“Customers aren’t going to come to a market if they don’t see faces that don’t look like them,” Gupta-carlson said, who identifies as Asian-indian.
Having a diverse network is also valuable to helping farmers build confidence “and connecting with people who look a little more like me,” she said.
On the consumer side, the lack of diversity can be alienating for both customers and farmers by not reflecting their dietary or culinary preferences.
Gupta-carlson visited a local market shortly after relocating from Seattle in 2010 and asked for a particular variety of dried beans.
“The farmers looked at me like I came from another planet,” Guptacarlson said.
Aneesa Waheed, owner of Tara Kitchen, acknowledged the market could be more diverse. The prices of some of the locally produced items at the market can be discouraging, too.
“It’s not sustainable for most people,” Waheed said.
Waheed got her start at Schenectady Greenmarket selling lines of sauces before launching her first brick-and-mortar location in 2012, and attributed the market as the launching pad to her success.
Yet her attempts to get others to follow her path haven’t taken off.
Waheed last summer launched an incubator to offer free mentoring to minority and womenowned startups.
While she has floated the concept of offering participants free space at the Schenectady Greenmarket, they’ve been cool to the idea.
Wilby said the market, which will move outdoors in mid-april, understands the challenges.
And as a Black woman, she gets it on a personal level.
“Right now, I feel our focus is on building more community partnerships and relationships,” she said.
Many of the city’s neighborhoods are “food deserts,” which are defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as low-income areas that are more than a mile from a grocery store.
Wilby prefers the term “food apartheid.”
After all, a desert is naturally occurring, and low-income communities suffering from a withdrawal of investments are not.
“It’s something made by people and it’s something we can change by building more just-and-equitable food systems,” Wilby said.
The pandemic exposed the sheer scope of food insecurity in the U.S, and the Schenectady Greenmarket saw an uptick in visitation from people taking advantage of federal programming that doubled the amount of federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program nutrition benefits spent at farmers markets.
The Greenmarket hopes to continue to build on those numbers and is working with CDTA on exploring a transportation route to shuttle people to-and-from the market.
“Our next steps include reaching out to community leaders and stakeholders to determine key locations where transportation support will be provided,” Wilby said.
Troy-based Capital Roots said while broadening access to farmers markets to low-income communities is important, it shouldn’t be the only plank in delivering access to fresh produce, and other approaches have proven to be more effective in getting fruits and vegetables into food deserts, including their Veggie Mobile and dropoffs at neighborhood stores.
Capital Roots recently completed a study assessing the usage of SNAP benefits at farmers markets and found redemption rates are anemic.
Redemption at the Schenectady Greenmarket was just 6 percent in 2018; Troy Waterfront Farmers Market, 9 percent; and 5 percent at Saratoga Farmers Market on Wednesday, a number that increased to 9 percent by the weekend.
“What that says is that these are just not places where people are using their benefit coupons,” said Capital Roots CEO Amy Klein.
Wilby said the numbers have been increasing since the pandemic, in part due to the state’s Double Up Food Bucks initiative.
“That’s definitely a huge factor,” Wilby said. “It had to do with the market’s commitment to prioritizing low-income community members and thinking of ways to make the space inviting and comfortable for people.”
And while the markets are a valuable platform for producers, simply bumping vendors of color isn’t an automatic guarantee that customer base will follow.
“I’m not sure if it would have an immediate or strong impact in creating more diversity in shoppers because there are a number of factors that keep them a less-diverse environment than we would all want them to be,” Klein said.
Troy Waterfront Farmers Market, too, acknowledges the lack of diversity, and are also aiming to broaden participation past the prepared food vendors who constitute 20 percent of the market, offering a rich tapestry of Venezuelan, Indian, Mexican, Caribbean and African cuisine, among others.
“We’re always trying to increase food access programs and accessibility across the board to bring people to the market,” said Steve Ridler, market manager.
Yet at the same time, the lack of diversity in many ways is simply a reflection of broader inequities in the farming and agricultural sector, he said. Gupta-carlson agrees. “We’re lucky in that we have land and some access to capital,” she said, noting Squash Villa will expand into Washington County. “But that’s not the case for a lot of people, particularly for people of color.”
And when it comes to the dried beans she couldn’t find a decade ago:
“We are now growing them ourselves and are finding a market for them.”