The manager claims
small farmers won't
come to market, so
buying wholesale
is a 'necessity'


































































'It's deplorable
what happens in
a lot of these
markets,' one
farmer says.

Most of the Produce Comes From a Wholesale Warehouse

There probably isn't a city in California with as many farmers markets per capita as Bakersfield. The city of nearly 400,000 at the south end of the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley had 12 at last count, three times more than San Francisco. In fact, Bakersfield may well have more markets than real farmers selling at them, judging from a recent spot check of markets in town and interviews with a number of those involved in the business. Real farmers aren't needed for much more than window dressing for what appears to be the markets' main business: the sale of produce from the same wholesale distributors that supply supermarkets.

For example, at the Saturday morning market in the Montgomery Ward parking lot, Kern County's premier certified farmers market, about three-quarters of the produce on display one recent Saturday had been unloaded in more than 60 boxes from an 18-wheel tractor trailer truck emblazoned with the logo of O.K. Produce an hour before the market opened. The OK Produce merchandise was sold at a table supervised by Charles Drew, the head of the Kern Farmers Market Association, the group that sponsors most of the markets in Bakersfield.

Farmers markets are extolled in the press as the place to go for vine-ripened fruits and vegetables picked a day or two earlier, produce that is said to be much better than the produce sold in supermarkets. It is an image that the Kern association attempts to capitalize on with slogans on flyers and promotional literature proclaiming that the group has supplied Bakersfield with "farm fresh produce since 1980," fruits and vegetables delivered "direct to you."

The Kern Farmers Market Association isn't breaking any laws, according to Rick White, of the Kern County agricultural commissioner's office, the agency charged with assuring that produce sold in certified farmers markets comes from farmers who are certified as having grown it themselves. The wholesale produce, he explained, is not officially part of the market. It is sold at a table that is supposed to be 10 feet away from the farmers market.

"We know they're bringing it in" from OK Produce, said White. "So he's not fooling us. As long as the customers know it's not part of the certified farmers market, it's permitted."

Indeed, when the market opened for business the tables bearing dozens of items from the OK Produce truck, ranging from purple potatoes to bell peppers to bananas, were posted with signs alerting consumers that "this vendor may not grow the produce sold in this space and has not been certified by the agricultural commissioner."

Ed Williams, of the Department of Food and Agriculture, agreed that the direct marketing law that governs farmers markets doesn't prevent vendors from selling noncertified produce adjacent to certified farmers markets, as long as they are outside the area for the market mapped out on the manager's permit. "We can't stop them just because they set up next to a certified farmers market," said Williams. "It would be no different than setting up out in the middle of a corn field or anywhere else in the state."

In an interview, Charles Drew defended his sale of fruits and vegetables from O.K. Produce at the farmers markets he runs. He insisted that he had little choice. The farms around Bakersfield are all large operations, he explained. Over the years, many small farmers from other areas who specialize in growing for farmers markets have given Bakersfield's markets a try. "But they find out that their sales are not like in L.A. or along the coast, so they come two or three times and they don't come back," Drew explained. "Since we have so few small growers, and we don't attract them from other areas, it was a necessity to keep our market going," he said. "It's a way to offer more fruits and vegetables to consumers."

Still, the sale of wholesale produce at a certified farmers market does not sit well with many advocates of farmers markets. Indeed, it is an unusually blatant illustration of a trend that is taking place more subtly in other markets: the encroachment of major agribusinesses into certified farmers markets, alternative outlets that the Legislature was motivated to create, in part, to help small farmers. It is a trend that could in the long run push real farmers right out of farmers markets.

"It's deplorable what happens in a lot of these markets," said Robert Munyon, a farmer near Lodi who serves on the Integrity Task Force, a group that operates under the auspices of the state Department of Food and Agriculture to devise ways to tighten enforcement of the direct marketing law. Some managers are so desperate to have lots of produce on display to attract customers that they ignore questions about where the produce comes from, Munyon said.

Last year, several participants in markets operated by Charles Drew pulled out in protest of his business practices and set up several markets of their own, calling their group the Bakersfield Certified Farmers Market Association. Drew said they left after he caught them selling produce that they didn't grow, inferior produce at that. "They were basically bringing in No. 2s when No. 1s were available," said Drew. The defectors, however, insisted that they had nobler motives. "We want to put the farmer back in farmers markets," said Debbie Harvey, the first president of the new association, in an interview last year shortly after the new markets opened. "If we don't grow it, we don't sell it," Harvey said, referring to her own farm.

However, Harvey acknowledged that the association "supplements" its market to a certain extent, selling wholesale produce on a table at one end of the market, "because we're just getting started."

A year later, the Bakersfield Certified Farmers Market Association has closed the market that was expected to be its largest on Saturday morning in downtown Bakersfield for lack of customers. At two other markets operated by the association, on Thursdays and Saturdays at the corner of Brimhall and Coffee, apparently only one certified farmer, Larry Richardson, the current head of the association, had a space offering peaches, plums and nectarines for sale. The asparagus, artichokes, beans, lettuce and other produce on the noncertified table constituted a majority of the produce on sale at the markets those days.

Lately the offshoot association has become the target of a bitter protest by a farm couple who until recently sold their stone fruit at one of the group's markets. The couple, Keith and Helga Baerg, of Dinuba, were told in May that they would no longer be welcome at the association's Tuesday afternoon market on University Avenue, a market they say they helped start. They said Harvey told them that the market already had enough peaches, plums and nectarines.

The Baergs protested their ouster by posting a large sign at their table on their last day in the market. "We have been sent away from our beloved market by an unfair excuse," the sign read.

Keith Baerg said he has tried to stay out of the crossfire between the two associations in town and has sold his stone fruit at both markets, although he is disillusioned with the business practices of both. Of those who left Drew's association to start their own, he said, "The only reason they cut loose is because they saw Charles Drew making so much money selling wholesale produce. But they do it, too. They have the same setup."

Baerg added, "I believe certified farmers markets should be for certified farmers. If anybody has to move, it should be the noncertified vendors."

The Baergs still sell at the Saturday morning market in the Montgomery Ward parking lot. They have also sold their fruit at farmers markets in Visalia and elsewhere in Tulare County. In those markets, farmers get to vote on market policies. If there is an opening in one of the markets, the management lets a new farmer in to sell whatever they grow. That means there are many growers selling the same varieties of tree fruit on any given market day. But the markets are democratic--true farmers markets in more than just name.

The markets in Bakersfield, in contrast, are "totally unique," said Keith. "There's no other market in the state run like those two."

"We're one of the very few real growers [at the markets in Bakersfield] who grow our own fruit," added Helga. "If that's the way it has to be in Bakersfield, that's too bad. Bakersfield is a big city. They should have a real farmers market. They could have a booming farmers market." What Bakersfield has instead, said Helga, is a "supermarket on wheels."

Mark Thompson