October 13, 1998

Crescent City Farmers Market releases farming initiatives economic report

After three years of unprecedented growth, the Loyola-sponsored Crescent City Farmers Market marked its third anniversary on Saturday, October 3, 1998, with the release of a public policy statement concerning issues facing small farmers in the Greater New Orleans Region. This report is one of the many initiatives that makes the Crescent City Farmers Market more than just a farmers market. “Barriers to Growth” represents an extraordinary collaboration between public and private, urban and rural, and consumer and producer to initiate and promote ecologically sound economic development for individuals, families, and small businesses in the food and agriculture sector in New Orleans and the surrounding region.

Each week, the Crescent City Farmers Market plays host to 30 ­ 40 vendors from 16 Louisiana and Mississippi parishes/counties and to more than 1,000 shoppers. The market is responsible for changing farmers from wholesalers to retailers, part-time to full-time producers, and rural citizens to regional ambassadors. In addition, the market creates new economic development in other parts of our region, including five new farmers markets started in Hammond, Baton Rouge, Kenner, New Roads, and Covington.

In “Barriers to Growth” the ECOnomics Institute has researched and identified public policy barriers that unless addressed may prevent this extraordinary growth from continuing. Some issues identified by this report include:

• The region’s small-scale farmers tend not to identify lack of income itself as a problem. Rather, they name more specific challenges, such as the difficulty they experience finding labor, obtaining product liability or health insurance, securing credit, and locating the technical information they need about growing, processing, or marketing.
• The difficulty of finding people to do farmwork is by far the most frequently identified problem among the growers interviewed. The need to save labor is frequently behind a drive to purchase costly equipment, use costly synthetic chemicals (such as pesticides and herbicides), switch to a less labor-intensive crop regardless of price or demand, or scale back or abandon a farming operation.
• The principal resource needs discussed by farmers are for credit and, more importantly, information and technology. Most farmers believe that credit will not be extended to small-scale farmers (at least not for some of their particular needs such as the purchase of second-hand equipment) and many do not think about farming on borrowed money. Investment in capital-intensive items is therefore low and the competitive consequences are sometimes severe.
• To respond to the information vacuum, producers most often get on the phone to other growers and attend meetings of groups like the Southern Greenhouse Growers Association, the Louisiana Organic Association, and the Southern Sustainable Agricultural Network. In time, small farmers are developing their own support network, but it is a slow and imperfect process.
• Prices and market opportunities would likely improve for small-scale farmers if local consumers and their governments recognized more fully the potential resource that small-scale growers represent. Both consumers and producers in Louisiana would benefit from the dissemination of information about the value of thriving local agriculture and the changes in local buying habits and private and public infrastructure investments that accompany such change.

“Barriers to Growth” was drafted from interviews with 20 local farmers, LA Cooperative Extension Agents, and market organizers. Leslee Hornick and Catherine Drake wrote the report. Hornick is a freelance writer with 12 years of experience writing about business and economic development. Drake was a staff member with the ECOnomics Institute. “Barriers to Growth” is part of a Ford Foundation Initiative in partnership with the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF) and Loyola University.

–Kristine David Director of Public Affairs, and Jeff Barron, Twomey Center Regional Institute coordinator