Supply, value still found at farmers market
Mike Barber is quick to spout out the numbers. A 50-pound bag of flour that once cost him $66 had gone up to $87. Filling up his tractor with diesel gasoline cost him $15 to $22 more than six months prior.
Like all Americans, it’s the reality that he and his wife, Judy Barber, face on a daily basis as they maintain their farm, Yorkville Hops and Produce, near Rockmart.
“We’re just conduits for this. We just put the seeds in the ground, and God does the rest,” Mike Barber said.
They normally set up at the Rockmart Farmers Market each Thursday, a variety of cucumbers, squash and peppers sit out on this warm June day. Like the other vendors, they have worked to bring as much product as they can to help those locally get something nutritious for them and their families.
“We have a lot of customers come back because they know we’ll have it,” Barber said. “They know when they come here and get it from us it will be fresh.”
Market manager Melinda King said she has seen some of the prices increase from their vendors, but it has been directly related to the increase in the costs for the farmers.
“So you’re still gonna have that. However, we’ve had no complaints from our customers so far about it because everything right now costs more. So it’s not that outrageous for our prices to have gone up,” King said.
CUTTING ‘FOOD MILES’
The Rockmart Farmers Market opens every Thursday at 2 p.m beside the Silver Comet Trailhead in downtown. It’s a nonprofit that organizes and approves vendors from within a 60-mile radius of Rockmart to bring fresh, locally grown produce, meat and baked goods to sell.
King has been the market manager since 2019. She said while some vendors have increased prices, the market has an advantage over grocery stores.
“The difference between the farmers market and the grocery store right now is that you are cutting out a lot of that supply chain issue that the stores are having where they’re not getting shipments or they’re not getting as much,” King said.
“Because these products are grown by the people that are selling them and produced by the people that are selling them, you’re still going to be able to have the products that you’re looking for every day.”
Kip Bishop has been a vendor at the market for nearly three years. His Edangate Farm in Kingston is a certified naturally grown farm, meaning it doesn’t use any synthetic herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers or genetically modified organisms in the growth of their produce.
“I just keep telling my customers you don’t have to worry about a food shortage. There’s not one if you know where the farmers market is because you can get everything,” Bishop said.
At the market, people can buy directly from the people that produce the food, and that makes a world of difference, according to Bishop.
“They’re called food miles. How many miles does it take for food to get to you? A head of broccoli that traveled 2,500 miles to get to the grocery store is not going to taste the same as one that’s from six miles up the road. Every day it loses flavor, nutrients,” Bishop said.
Bishop said he has seen more
and more people not just come by and get a few tomatoes or a bag of carrots here and there, they come with canvas bags or wagons and buy the bulk of their groceries at the market.
“And that’s smart. They’re getting fresh stuff, they’re getting local stuff. For the most part, it is certified naturally grown like us or organic, or at the very least, just grown locally, and you know what went into your food,” he said.
PACKAGED INFLATION
The normal cost of business has gone up across the board for industries and stores, services and restaurants, and farmers are not immune.
While Barber and his fellow farmers are mindful of rising costs on things like fertilizer, gasoline and pesticides, they have tried to not pass any increases on to the customer.
“We try not to raise our prices, but in order to be a profitable farm you’ve got to make money,” Barber said.
Edengate Farm began prepackaging most of its produce when the COVID-19 pandemic began, taking precautions by making sure all items were handled by people with gloves and masks on and then putting them in appropriate containers or zip-top bags.
Bishop said an example is their salad mix that they sell in a 64-ounce clamshell plastic container.
“It’s good for two weeks, but
our packaging costs … in one week’s time doubled. And then it went up again a week later. We absorbed the first one, but we had to go up on our price eventually to offset the packaging costs,” he said.
Despite that, Bishop said the increase in cost didn’t affect their sales.
A positive for Bishop has been that, as a CNG farm, they have to use organic fertilizers, which have traditionally been more expensive than the 34-0-0 chemically balanced fertilizer, but are now cheaper because they are not petroleum based.
Still, rising costs for gas to fuel farm equipment and the trucks they use to haul produce to markets as far away as Smyrna has affected their bottom line.
“We haven’t passed those prices on to the customer for the most part. Everything on our table is priced exactly like it was last year and we’re trying to keep it that way this year,” Bishop said.
DOUBLE SNAP
People receiving assistance from the government to help with food costs have an extra reason to visit the market.
The Rockmart Farmers Market partners with Wholesome Wave Georgia to allow people who receive Georgia EBT or SNAP benefits to double their amount of benefits when they purchase food-eligible items at the market.
King said the way it works is a person brings their EBT card to the market manager’s tent and
asks to run $10 on the card to use at the market.
“They get $10 in these wooden tokens that go towards all food eligible items, just like the grocery store, so their meat, their eggs, their honey, their baked goods and their produce. But what they also get is $10 of these green plastic tokens that are good, just for fresh fruits and vegetables,” King said.
Customers exchange the tokens for the products from each vendor. The vendors return the number of tokens they received at the end of each market and King has a check for them in that amount at the next market.
Wholesome Wave Georgia matches up to $50 of EBT/SNAP benefits per account, per market day.
Bishop said he’s had several people come to him at the Rockmart market this year who don’t know about the program or are just unsure about how it works.
“I don’t think there’s a stigma attached to it, but a lot of times … they feel a little bit apprehensive,” he said.
He said one woman came to his booth at Rockmart and asked if he took EBT cards. He said he didn’t directly but took her to King and said to come back and get what she wanted after she had run her card with her.
“And she came back down, she was literally in tears,” Bishop said. “She said, ‘Mr. Bishop, I did not realize that when I gave them $30 they were going to give me $60 to spend here.’ She said, ‘I can actually buy groceries now.’”