Volume LIV, No. 10
June, 2001
Universities and Community - Based Economic
Development: The Case of the Crescent City
Farmers Market
Richard McCarthy IV
IN THIS ISSUE
How can academic institutions and grass-roots economic enterprises mutually support each other? Richard McCarthy IV describes the values behind the evolution of Loyola University's ECOnomics Institute and its Crescent City Farmers Market as an example of many stakeholders benefiting from cooperation in meeting local needs.
When I consider the role of universities in economic development and the relationship between a university and its host community, my mind always focuses upon Paul Yate's 1979 film Breaking Away. The film is a coming of age story set in Bloomington, Indiana. It addresses the relationships between working class locals (known as "cutters," so named for the work that they have historically done in the nearby limestone quarries) and the visiting, upper middle class students. The protagonist of the film, a recent high school graduate Dave Stoller delays the tough decisions that he has to make — between education and wage labor — by pursuing a fantasy existence as an Italian bicycle racing enthusiast. Amusingly throughout the film, he refers to his father as "papa."
In one of the more moving scenes of the film, "papa" takes his son for a walk to discuss his future. As they stroll through the campus of the University of Indiana, the father describes the virtues of higher education to his son by reflecting upon his own shortcomings as a manual laborer. He shares how despite the fact that he had labored to produce so much of the limestone for the campus buildings he has "never felt welcomed here." His remark is powerful; and indeed it reflects a concern that many of us who administer universities have. We attempt to create a nurturing community for students, faculty, staff, alumni. And yet, often the host population is drawn outside of the community boundaries. Today in my work with commercial fishers and farmers on behalf of Loyola University New Orleans, I am especially pleased with how they "feel welcomed here."
These concerns do matter, require constant attention, and impact an institution's bottom line. Universities face increasing budgetary pressures due to tightening federal fiscal policies for education, demands by staff and faculty for increased salaries and benefits (in order to keep afoot with for profit, private sector levels), and the never ending pressures to upgrade equipment (especially that of high technology). Students, who face pressures of a shifting landscape for loans and higher expectations from fierce marketing by universities, add increased pressures to administrations working to retain students for the full four years. As a result, universities are under pressure to deliver more with less. Logic would lead one to conclude that under these pressures, expansive efforts to carve a role for universities as catalysts for community based economic development would fall by the wayside as luxurious pursuits for institutions free from these pressures. I argue that it is because of (rather than in spite of) these pressures that universities are learning to re examine their core values, re engineer their services to and methods by which they teach students and learn from their communities. Paradoxically, it is the influx of market pressures that is driving the process to embrace each institution's social values to roll up its sleeves to partner with its host community to create economic opportunities together. This is exciting! It is especially so because it sets in motion the potential to contribute to the host community, learn with it, and then ultimately to transform university institutions themselves.
CORE VALUES OF THE INSTITUTION
I wish here to share with you our experiences of entering into a regional partnership with family farmers, commercial fishers, restaurant chefs, public housing residents, food craving consumers, and more, to begin to rebuild the food delivery system in the Greater New Orleans region. We have done so with no formal expertise in agriculture or enterprise development. Instead, we drew upon our Jesuit institution's core values of social justice to identify the stakeholders who would help us to seize upon an opportunity that we had identified as worthy of exploration.
I mention the institution's core values because in a rapidly changing market for higher education, it appears as though the universities that have either not lost sight of or have rediscovered these values are the ones that are better placed to survive and thrive. After all, this idea mirrors closely with what the for-profit private sector has experienced in recent years: the companies that correlate a clear mission with their competencies are the ones that have a better grasp on what they are doing and why.
In our case, home base is a Jesuit university. For this, we are fortunate. We possess a wealth of scholarly support for our work. Imbedded in the missions of Jesuit universities, including Loyola University New Orleans, is what Jesuit scholar Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. described at his 1982 convocation address at Santa Clara University: "A Christian university must take into account the Gospel preference for the poor…. [It] should be present intellectually where it is needed: to provide science for those who have not science; to provide skills for the unskilled; to be a voice for those who do not possess the academic qualification to promote and legitimate their rights."1
According to Thomas M. Lucas, S.J., from its beginnings the Society of Jesus pursued "an urban strategy."2 By this, it is meant that the Jesuits have generally settled their institutions in urban settings precisely because they could achieve a multiplier effect of working with a concentrated group of under-served citizens who in turn would become champions for others.
The Twomey Center for Peace through Justice was founded in 1947 at Loyola University New Orleans as the Institute for Industrial Relations by Louis J. Twomey, S.J. After Twomey's death in 1969, the organization evolved into a clearinghouse for innovative partnerships between the University and the community pursuant a varied roster of topical issues: death penalty, civil rights, war in Central America, homelessness, hunger and nutrition, conflict resolution, diversity, and more. Irrespective of the revolving areas of concern, what has remained constant is its posture of risk taking and a genuine effort to make decisions with community leaders rather than for them.
In 1994, I served as editor for this publication, the Blueprint for Social Justice. I became increasingly curious about and inspired by the history of the Mondragon worker cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain and other like efforts to create regional economies that generate wealth and a sense of community. Louisiana was in the fifteenth year of an oil-related recession. Opportunistic politician and neo Nazi David Duke and the efforts against him dominated state politics. The state's economic strategies continued to pit jobs versus the environment, thus creating the false sense that smokestacks equal progress. In New Orleans, professionals were packing their bags and heading to the sub- and ex-urban communities in the region (and beyond) due to shrinking economic opportunities and an explosion in violent crime. Meanwhile, the Police Department was so preoccupied combating internal corruption, creating the public perception that not only could it not solve urban crime but that the department also contributed to it. Indeed, a general malaise sunk in over the city and state. Our universities were not immune to these pressures. After all, in such dire economic times, who could afford to send their kids to college? And even if you could, why on earth would you send them to a place so rampant with violence as New Orleans?
I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of creativity among decision-makers, the news media and especially among my friends in social justice circles. Calls for preventative measures, long term planning and a commitment to explore new models to solve our social and economic problems were either too vague to warrant serious consideration or too infrequent to get noticed. Deeply committed to social change, I somehow found myself out of sync with those whom I considered my fellow travelers. I had lost interest in the importance of symbolic struggles and for allowing others to define my beliefs by what I stood against. I kept returning to the Mondragon experiment and the closely associated slogan of "building the road as we travel." For me, it sums up everything that civil discourse lacked in our community in the early 1990s. Citizens had lost hope that it was possible to build something new together. Perhaps, the last example of such a feat was the building of the Louisiana Superdome in 1975 — that by all estimations was a top-down decision process.
I was willing to trade away rigid ideological preconceptions that I may have possessed as how to build the road. I was willing to collaborate with anyone who was interested in operating in good faith; and I believed it vital not to pursue the familiar strategy of learned institutions to research the subject matter alone and upon completion share the analysis with the wider community. Troubled by the state's efforts to sacrifice our natural and cultural resources for the creation of jobs, I decided that it was time to begin to assemble a framework with which to posit alternatives to the jobs versus environment debate. Naming it the ECOnomics Institute, I became "we." We began to explore strategies to actualize its stated mission of initiating and promoting ecologically sound economic development in the Greater New Orleans region.
FOOD AS CULTURAL COMMON
DENOMINATOR
Due to a wide array of experiences and influences, our attention began to focus upon food and agriculture as a possible entry point for this new, Loyola effort. International attention on Louisiana cooking was on the rise; and more importantly, in New Orleans food plays a remarkable cultural role by providing a common language for citizens of the city, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, class, or neighborhood. To top it off, I learned from the local community foundation how civic activist Sharon Litwin had expressed interest in related pursuits, most notably to establish farmers' markets. I knew Sharon, having attended high school with her daughters. I would have never guessed in a million years that our lives would become so entwined in the subsequent six years. She brought to the table an enormous set of skills and contacts related to organizational development, the restaurant industry and media relations — all of which I possessed very little. I brought to the table energy, a different set of contacts and skills, and most importantly Loyola University and its tacit consent for the project. We met for lunch, traded visions, and immediately began to compile a list of potential stakeholders and a very cursory timeline from which to begin.
We identified everyone we could think of who, despite their differences, would share in the desire to establish a new farmers' market in downtown New Orleans. Initially it included the county agent of the cooperative extension service, city hall leaders, health and nutrition advocates in state social services as well as doctors in private practice, community gardeners, public housing residents, business leaders, chefs, downtown residents, and farmers. We picked up more people as we went.
Driving the message of self-interest, we rallied these disparate quarters to invest their time, energy and dreams to reinvent the more timeless elements of the municipal market system: a low overhead, initial point of distribution for regional farmers to market their products directly to urban consumers. Remember, we were careful to keep the rallying cry to a simple, attainable objective that everyone could get his/her arms around. We were not specifically seeking support for ecological sustainability. That would come later, much later. We called this effort an ad hoc committee for the establishment of the Green Market New Orleans.3 Honestly, we had no idea whether there was enough energy to get the project off the ground. We had few preconceptions about who would assume leadership roles beyond that of the founders: volunteers Sharon Litwin and downtown resident John Abajian, and me as lead staff. Sounds like a particularly risky, open ended venture that potentially places Loyola University in a tenuous and exposed position? — You bet! Consider that we had no experience in managing farmers' markets, had few contacts with farmers, were uncertain about the legality of operating in the city, and had only begun to raise the resources that the University Administration required so as to insure the project's eventual self sufficiency. It is perhaps especially accurate to describe the University's role here as social entrepreneur.
I would also describe the role of corporate citizen — the William B.Reily Company — as social entrepreneur. Its president Boatner Reily granted us access to their mural-adorned parking lot as the site of the Market. A leading civic activist and former chair of the Tulane University Board of Administrators, Boatner entered into a most unusual philanthropic relationship with a different university (Loyola), thus proving that some philanthropic assets come in strange packages — a parking lot!
Founders of this new project, we all believed in the necessity of leadership — that it takes a few individuals to lead, to drive a process, and to be accountable for those actions. We also shared a commitment to process. We devoted the first year researching farmers' markets in other communities. We wrote grants for seed capital; helped to conduct a Planning Commission study for an interim zoning district for green markets; and identified potential partners; and slowly developed an organizational culture that embraces transparency in all decisions, consensus whenever possible, and a general sense of fun. Most meetings involved food. I recall one committee member describing how she had never been involved with anything that felt this tangible or this enjoyable.
Together with stakeholders like the Cooperative Extension agents and farmers with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, we developed rules, regulations and procedures for the farmers' market. After all, without the mechanisms in place to insure an open, fair and defendable set of rules, we could be setting ourselves up for controversy and failure.
ENLISTING FARMERS, BUILDING A TRACK RECORD
With my urban accent and clothes, callous-free fingers and no experience with agriculture or rural communities, I was at an obvious disadvantage in enlisting farmers for our market. I attended vegetable producers' meetings, organic growers' workshops, and utilized the networks of the land grant universities and the civil rights born Federation of Southern Cooperatives; however, ultimately it was dogged persistence that paid off. After opening day when we showcased fifteen vendors to approximately 1,000 shoppers who descended upon the lot like locusts, we were in serious need of greater supply to satisfy the remarkable consumer demands.
In desperate need of a citrus farmer, I began to make cold calls on the phone from a list of growers provided by the Department of Agriculture. With only one individual who sounded remotely interested in the exercise, I settled on him — Lester L'Hoste. I had this sense that if I were to telephone him enough times that eventually he would give in to my pleas to join our market. On the final call, I knew that either of two things would happen. He'd give in and try out our market or he would call the police make a complaint about my harassing behavior. I was lucky; he agreed to come. Lester was lucky too. He said yes to something that had more immediate and long lasting impact upon his family's livelihood than he ever could have imagined. I recall our conversation during his first day at the market. He brought down a truck-load of satsumas, expecting to sell very little which would have allowed him to return to his farm free from my continued pursuit. Instead, he sold everything he brought down in an hour, borrowed our cell phone to call his wife to bring more, and then pondered his new life as a retailer engaged in the process of consumer driven agriculture.
CREATING NEW COMMERCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE YIELDS MANY HARVESTS
Five to six years later, I can look back over that period and identify the important steps that we took to create a new commercial infrastructure for farmers in our region. At the time, it felt like perpetual motion. Fortunately, we anticipated that to happen. Prior to opening the market, we used the peace and quiet of a planning process to match anticipated needs to community partners to provide the skills and the guidance to help us build our organization's capacity. After all, once we went public — opening day of the market, our tiny operation underwent extraordinary stress due to the demands and expectations of a region that was hungry for a community enterprise that works. Please remember the real and psychological malaise that hung over our city and state at the time.
Farmers' markets are extraordinarily efficient mechanisms for enterprise development, regional cooperation, attracting shoppers to main streets thus creating humane and safe city centers, capturing people's imagination about all sorts of possibilities, and generally cultivating a sense of community. While examples of this are far too great to adequately describe here, consider this following abridged list of what we have managed to accomplish in the past five years since opening our market:
• We attract 1,500 shoppers to our markets each week;
• Our fifty plus vendors travel from as far as two states away to participate in our markets;
• The annual combined sales at our two markets, circa 2001, is approximately $1 million;4
• In the first three years of the market, fifteen new businesses were formed, twenty-two new jobs were created;5
• We broker many new commercial relationships between market vendors and dozens of world class restaurants in New Orleans, resulting in the development of weekly, email and facsimile newsletters featuring fresh products, the producers' names and contact information thus helping chefs add value to their menus and farmers and fishers diversify their customer base;
• We bridge the digital divide for traditionally low technology family farmers and fishers by developing a farmers' market web site6, weekly electronic newsletters to subscribing consumers featuring information about which chef is scheduled to cook at the market and which products are ripe7, and individual web pages for our vendors thus enabling them to participate in the new, direct marketing opportunities of e-commerce;
• We are successfully incubating a rather special, model enterprise among single mothers living on welfare in public housing by using the farmers' market as an initial point of distribution for their products and as a hands-on enterprise academy that rewards creativity, hard work and the investment of sweat equity with a real self employment scheme8;
• We positively impact public policy affecting independent food producers in our region by helping to direct the City of New Orleans' Planning Commission study for an interim zoning district for green markets and by developing and publishing food handling guidelines for open air markets that utilize holistic food safety theories and problem solving not currently employed by the State of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals9;
• We replicate our efforts in communities across the nation through the distribution and sale of our publications10; direct technical assistance to communities near and far; and participation at regional and international conferences as guest speakers and workshop facilitators;
• We provide ongoing technical assistance to our market vendors through workshops, use of our resource library and individualized assistance that has enabled some family businesses to expand well beyond their wildest dreams.
GIVING BOTH AGRICULTURE AND THE UNIVERSITY A HUMAN FACE
Every Saturday morning in New Orleans, Crescent City Farmers Market shoppers stumble out of bed and mosey down to the Market, exchange morning pleasantries with volunteers at the welcome booth where they purchase their coffee and chicory. With coffee mugs in hand, they work their way through the Market to purchase breakfast muffins or sweet potato pies. They run into friends whom they have not seen for a week, and move on to purchase flower bouquets, soft shell crabs, mustard greens, and strawberries from vendors who also are now their friends. The rhythm of the morning is gentle yet robust with the joy and the excitement for fellowship and fresh produce. Indeed, this was our wildest dream! We had hoped to create a public space that would enhance both the quality of life for urban dwellers and broker new social and commercial relationships between consumers and producers. In 1994, we responded to the economic malaise, suburban flight from urban crime, animosity between urban and rural citizens, by diving deep into our University's core values. We sought the appropriate mechanism and willing community partners to create an economic and social community that rewards hard work, risk taking, and mutual respect. Six years later, we proudly promote our region's more innovative, organic farmers and sustainable fishers. We marvel at the growing sophistication of their businesses and the complex and genuine web of personal and commercial relationships among the vendors in the farmers' market. In total, we have created a community of interests, with shared norms that go well beyond the explicit rules and regulations of the farmers' market.
Farmers like Henry Amato, who manufactures native wines on his farm in Independence, LA, today exports his blueberry wines to Japan where interest in its antioxidant qualities has grown to a fever pitch. He serves as a model entrepreneur for members of his rural community who otherwise had assumed that agriculture was a part of the past rather than a thriving part of the future.
Likewise, farmer Jim Core closed his appliance repair business to resume farming full time as a result of the farmers' market and the growing demand for his specialty vegetables from shoppers and chefs. Word of Jim's transition from part to full time farming spread throughout his community of Folsom, LA, and beyond. Folks could not fully fathom that it was possible to make a decent living by raising vegetables full time. Jim proved them wrong. That is, until he got injured working in the fields. His foot got mangled up in his tractor's PTO, almost requiring amputation. After several surgeries, doctors managed to save the foot. Unfortunately, the cost of the medical care far surpassed the means of a family farmer who, as with many small businesses, has no health insurance. To add insult to injury, the Core family's farm is just that — a family farm. With plenty of produce in the fields, ready for harvest, but no one healthy enough to do the work and facing exorbitant medical bills, the Cores faced certain ruin.
As described earlier, the Crescent City Farmers Market had become a very high profile community of interests. Its set norms instructed its members to act. The pastor at the Cores' church assembled an army of volunteer farm workers from among its congregation and priests in training to harvest, pack and tend to crops. The Covington farmers' market began to serve up plate lunches to raise money for medical bills; and we organized several fundraisers with assistance from chefs who were eager to help and a news media familiar with the farmers' market and the good will that it had spread throughout the region. In a matter of weeks, we raised over $18,000 for the family. Today, he is back on his feet, harvesting some of the prettiest red Russian kale we have seen.
Had Jim Core not chosen to devote his and his family's time and efforts to help create the farmers' market community, his injury would have remained the unfortunate mishap of a private citizen. Instead, it served as a rallying cry for solidarity and mutual aid among farmers, consumers and chefs. Indeed, the injury and the plight of the uninsured possessed a very familiar, human face.
Likewise, we have given Loyola University a new face. By developing partnerships and taking risks, we have assembled agricultural businesses whose livelihoods now depend upon the University and its willingness to share with them its position in the community as a respected intermediary. Without it, they would give Loyola University little thought or attention. After all, unless their kids were fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to the University, there would be little reason for Loyola to pop up on the purview of limited resource farmers and fishers. Consumers also view the University from a new vantage point. It is the institution that has helped to bring life to a downtown neighborhood on Saturdays and high quality to their dinner tables. While it may prove difficult to measure the impact of this new exposure for the University upon bottom line concerns like student enrollment or retention, there is reason to believe it is significant. After all, consider how often large institutions get weekly opportunities to restate their social values to an entire community. They are rare. We have become an integral part of the University's soft sell marketing campaign. I would argue that success of this campaign is directly proportional to the deftness of the touch. In other words, Loyola University earns bonus community points for keeping its profile low and always secondary to the community-driven corporate image of the farmers' market. Subtlety and good taste make the public relations strategy a success.
TRANSFORMING THE LEARNING INSTITUTION
Interestingly enough, the most difficult challenge may in fact be to change our institution: integrating our work into the curriculum, encouraging the dining services to purchase from local farmers, and so forth. This is not to say that we have not enjoyed success on these fronts. In particular, business school professors have made remarkable efforts to utilize the real world, microcosm of the farmers' market as a laboratory for their students. Some classes have conducted surveys, while others have provided technical assistance. However, we have only begun to scratch the surface. Potential for meaningful learning opportunities that cut across the curriculum exists in large doses. Our initiative is young, so we will remain patient.
Neighboring Tulane University is widely recognized as a high caliber research institution. While conducting research has in the past placed the University in direct contact with the community, this dynamic means that ivory tower experts explore and expose problems nearby. While much of this work has contributed greatly to understanding poverty, illiteracy, racism, and so forth, the approach has been needs-based rather than asset- based. Tulane is by no means alone in this matter, and it also has a track record in partnering with the community.11 Needless to say, universities across the nation are grappling with how best to embrace the community in the role of eager pupil rather than always as expert. The extraordinary proliferation of service learning projects is itself an indicator of universities reexamining their roles in their communities, their assets, and the content and the methods of their curricula. Under the dynamic leadership of new University President Scott S. Cowen, Tulane University has both launched and expanded community initiatives. It has a new service learning program, an integrated student living program — the Urban Village, a multi faceted employment and skills development initiative — the National Center for the Urban Community in conjunction with the traditionally African American Xavier University. Do aggressive efforts like these spark dissent? In order to transform larger, research dominated universities, the challenges indeed may be vast. English department professor and faculty director of the Urban Village program Amy Koritz, Ph.D. recently shed light on this point when she described to me: "the Administration fully supports our efforts. It understands how we are addressing concerns over student retention, for instance. If we were to identify any sources for resistance to this new thinking in education, it would be among some of the older research faculty uncomfortable with change and in sharing authorship with stakeholders."
I posit here an analogy from private industry. In the 1980s when General Motors' leadership decided that it was time to explore new management and marketing models, they were careful not add too much stress to existing corporate structure. Indeed, the team concept was a threat to white and blue collar labor. They established the Saturn automotive line as a separate corporate entity that would operate flexibly and outside of the boundaries established by the United Auto Workers' contracts. The lessons at the Saturn plant were refined and then eventually integrated into General Motors proper. To a certain extent, we are our University's Saturn plant.
For us, the cultural asset of food has blended well with an institution comfortable with and highly conscious of its core values. Can the entry point into community partnering that we have found be replicated elsewhere? Maybe, maybe not. We were fortunate for the right people to assemble at the right time, in the right place; however, the wider we travel in our work, the more we are reminded that food is universal.
About the author
Former Blueprint editor Richard McCarthy IV is executive director of the ECOnomics Institute at Loyola University New Orleans' Twomey Center for Peace through Justice. A New Orleans native, he received his B.Sc. from Richmond College in international relations and his M.Sc. from the London School of ECOnomics in political sociology. An avid gardener and foodie, he is married to Bonnie Goldblum. Together, they live in New Orleans with young daughter Beatrix. He can be reached at mccarthy@loyno.edu. Log onto the farmers' market web site: www.crescentcityfarmersmarket.com . Among the many awards it has received, the market recently was named a Building Just Communities Model Project by the National Jesuit Office of Social and International Ministries. This paper was prepared for the American Association of University Administrators National Assembly, June 29, 2001.
Endnotes
1 Ignacio Ellacuría, J.J., "The Task of a Christian University," Convocation address at the University of Santa Clara, June 12, 1982.
2 Brennan O'Donnell, "For Openers." In Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education (Number 17, spring 2000).
3 We later changed the name of the market to the Crescent City Farmers Market as a result of legal pressure from the New York Greenmarket, but that's an entirely different story.
4 In 1999, MBA students with the Tulane University A.B. Freeman School of Business conducted an economic impact study that demonstrated that in 1998 the Crescent City Farmers Market's Saturday Market had generated annual combined sales of $550,000 for its vendors and another $450,000 for nearby businesses where shoppers would patronize stores upon leaving the market but before leaving the area. The highlights of this study are featured in the ECOnomcis Institute's 1999 Greenpaper, "Catalysts for Growth: Farmers' markets as a stimulus for economic development." The report can be downloaded from the worldwide web at www.loyno.edu/economics.institute.
5 Ibid.
6 www.crescentcityfarmersmarket.com
7 The name of our electronic publications are Crescent City eMarket (Tuesday and Saturday Market editions) and the eMarket Fax (for chefs). Subscriptions are free and can be attained on the web site.
8 A full analysis of this microenterprise development initiative can be found on the worldwide web at www.loyno.edu/economics.institute. We published our 2000 Greenpaper, "Pastabilities: From public assistance to private enterprise" on the subject.
9 Catherine Drake and Beverly Swango. From the Field to the Table: Suggested Food Handling Guidelines for Open-Air Farmers' Markets and Fairs (Loyola University New Orleans' ECOnomics Institute, 1998).
10 In addition to From the Field to the Table, we published Controlling the Chaos: Suggested Guidelines for Implementation and Management of a Retail Farmers' Market (Loyola University New Orleans' ECOnomics Institute, 2000).
11 The best example here is the Tulane School of Law's highly effective and controversial Environmental Law Clinic. For several years, the Clinic staff included a community organizer.
