Farmers markets aren't enough | Marcel Van Ooyen | TEDxManhattan

you hello everyone hello Lego there we go before I get started I'm going to make a confession and it's a secret that I've carried for nine years now since I've had this job and it's something that I think some of you out there may share with me and that is I don't like kale really I don't get it I'm glad I got that off my chest how many of you shop at green markets or other farmers markets raise your hand all right congratulations thank you but I bet you didn't know that by doing that you were part of the 1% before I talked a little about that I'm going to tell you a little bit green market green market was started 35 years ago by a dynamic duo oh no not those guys these guys Bob Lewis and Barry Ben opee and Bob and Barry wanted to save farms in the Hudson Valley and beyond and they wanted to connect New Yorkers to healthy fresh produce so they created Green Market and from the beginning green markets were a hit with New Yorkers in fact the first Green Market which opened not at Union Square most people think it was over at 59th and 2nd Avenue was so popular the first day people were grabbing up the produce and it was a little bit crazy that one of the founding fathers F asked Bob afterwards is there a famine going on so let's flash forward 35 years to today now there are over 130 farmers markets in New York City now 50 or so of those are green markets and these farmers markets are wonderful things they preserve farmland and more than that they keep farmland in production and they've support family farms and you know not only that but more recently they've been playing a key role in fighting obesity and diet-related diseases through accepting food scams and also a wonderful program created by the Department of Health called health bucks and those are $2 certificates so every time you go to a Green Market use your EBT you get $2 as a match if a 40% increase in your buying power it evens out the cost between overprocess and healthy food and it hopefully answers once and for all that if all things are even fruit can beat out fruit loops which is terrific we can't talk about farmer's markets unless we talk about farmers so let's talk about one of our green market farmers who I will call Fred mainly because that's his real name now Fred Fred and his family have been farming in a place called pancake Hollow New York for the last 150 years and their farm was doing great for decades they were selling apples to grocery stores and and that was going terrific but then in the early 80s something happened grocery stores started consolidating purchasing they started buying apples from outside the state and Fred's farm and their way of life was in trouble yes it's hard to believe there was trouble in pancake Hollow so Fred did something radical at the time he moved from wholesale and decided to join Green Market and remember this is in the early 80s he started selling these apples in Brooklyn and you know Brooklyn's a better place than it was back then you know it's a back you know it's changed a lot and so he stuck his neck out and did it you know Brooklyn today is you know terrific and it's full of foodies many of them here you know all of you are fedora wearing locavores who you know love to shop at our markets and that saved Fred's farm he was able to turn it around and the farm grew and it not only prospered but it went from 40 to 200 acres and today Fred's family is not just growing apples they have pears and blueberries and cherries and baked goods and Fred's son Albert even created a hard cider company which is perhaps appropriately named bad feed so farmers markets have exploded across the country they've gone up dramatically in the last 20 years and that's just been great for farmers farmers markets connect people to the people who grow their food they build relationships and they're a lot of the times they're the only chance for city dwellers to understand rural communities and the people who live there I like to call farmer's markets the gateway drug to local but a farmers markets are doing so great why are we still losing farms according to the American Farmland trust we lose a farm every 3 and 1/2 days that's an incredible and scary number and maybe it's because farmers markets PSAs and farm stands make up 1 percent of what Americans eat think about that the other 99% goes to wholesale channels and what's the wholesale channel that's a restaurant a grocery store a hospital the list goes on and on schools etc let's look at this another way and another my Comptroller like this joke the best I'll tell you that right now so so think about what you ate this week maybe you woke up in the morning you went to a deli you bought you've got a bagel and some fruit you've got a salad on your lunch break you ordered in Chinese food or went to your favorite Bistro and evening all of that food travelled through a whole sales channel our farming community has been divided up into two as of late you have small farmers who are able to sell retail who have diversified crop plans like fred has done move from Apple's to multiple products who can sell at farmer's markets and then you have an industrialized system that that favors large industrial sized farms so that the produce like your salad can go from the farm unlikely a farm that cute but it was free clipart so I used it to a wholesaler to a wash chop and bag facility to the salad bar to your plate and all along the way the farmer lost value and the price went up this is the American Way yes it's for profit companies run our system but it has downsides for the small farmers they can't compete and the mid-sized farms they can't compete with the price that comes from industrialized farms so they can't get in this market and for consumers it often means that the worst produce ends up in the poorest neighborhoods at the highest cost something is happening and change it you heard a little bit about it earlier and it's called food hubs and food hubs I'll admit they're not perfect some survive some don't but for small and mid-sized farmers right now it's all we have now I wrote this down because it's very long USA defines a business organization actively management forget it a food hub is a simple concept it's a group of people or an individual that's got together and decided to go outside the wholesale system so farm products to consumers in a way that doesn't harm farmers or doesn't harm the consumer they want to treat both fairly and that's terrific we had to decide to go out that system when we created our youth market program now Youth markets are teen run farm stands and we created them because green markets can't survive in every part of the city because the farmer may not make enough money so what do you do you set up a stand you provide them wholesale product you teach them how to run a stand and everybody wins a triple win but in order to get them the vegetables we needed to create a food hub so we created Green Market Co remarket Co aggregates produce from multiple farmers and distribute to multiple places like great restaurants like Tom's or Gramercy Tavern and institutions like the Lenox Hill neighborhood house which is one of my favorite stories because Lenox Hill before they started buying from our food hub 90% of what they made was made with frozen and canned vegetables a chef there Lin has been able to change that menu into a 90 percent that is fresh and local which is pretty amazing but in order to use our food hub to help our food access programs you have to buy the produce at a good price this is what I call sweet corn economics if we buy a tractor-trailer load of corn from a farmer big regional farmer we can get it for a third the cost if we buy it from a crate and we can pass those savings on to the consumers at youth markets and other locations but in order to do that you need infrastructure you need a lot of unsexy stuff you need a warehouse and a forklift and some pallet racks and trucks like this one and the reason the guy from Green Market has a Cisco truck up is because it reminds me of three things one the big boys have already made these investments they've bought the infrastructure to this truck I was standing on a street corner with a Lydia who runs our food hub and it drove by and she looked up inside and I said what's the matter and she said you know I never thought when I was getting a job when I was in college a few years ago but I'd have one that caused truck Envy and it was this truck that did it but then after I took the picture I looked at a little more closely and I noticed that there were plantains and yucca on there new york local truck now I've been a lot of farms in the Hudson Valley I have yet to see plantains are you going in one of them so some advertising person made a mistake but we'll forgive them for that this is something that my green market staff like to call focal which stands for fake local you can hashtag that out if you want but so we were able to open up our food hub we're able to get a little investment from the state and some foundations and in doing that we've been able to move a million pounds of local produce to the market in New York City which is over eight hundred million dollars or probably more that doesn't include institutions and we able to help 50 farmers in the process and one of those farmers is Fred because now fred is not only selling retail he's selling wholesale because green market co can give them a good price for his product so how do we scale up how do we make more Fred's how do we move from 1 percent to 5 percent to 50 percent well two ways first off all of you here and the 15 or so people I expect to want to watch me on YouTube 2 of them being my parents you need just the next time you go to a restaurant or you go to a grocery store ask them a simple question is anything here from a local farm that'll keep driving demand like you all do at at farmers markets and the second thing is that all our nonprofit leaders are foundations that our government folks need to realize that in order to connect mid-sized farms which are the fastest disappearing part of our farming community and they used to make up 70% of our farms and they're the ones that can get us from five percent to 50 percent you need to find a way to give them the infrastructure to do that whether it's a food hub or some other way and it needs to be an investment that is big and long-term because we have to compete with these guys now I joked around a little made fun of Cisco and you know actually I'm a little worried that there's going to be a Cisco Blackhawk helicopter over my house tonight but this is a real problem about real people about our farmers who are disappearing the mid-size farmers the ones who can help us the most the ones who don't grow and want to get in the wholesale but they can't because they're priced out and I know it's real because three of them are here today all the way from pancake Hollow Fred Becky Albert come on up well I'm not done yet now I get to my inspirational closing so if you could dim the lights and up no you don't you don't do that okay sorry by focusing on what matters most all of us can save farms we can't I wrote it down so I don't forget it so we can we can by creating a new wholesale system with a mission a system that avoids the mistake of the past a wholesale system with a heart one that treats farmers fairly increases access to all communities and values people as much as profits if we do that everyone everyone here all of you people watching me Fred and his family can be part of the 99% thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 18,331

Keywords: Local issues, Cooperation, TEDxTalks, Development, tedx, Agriculture, tedx talks, Entrepreneurship, Economics, Gardening, Nutrition, Plants, Urban Areas, ted talks, Sustainability, English, Urban Planning, ted, Change, ted talk, ted x, Farming, tedx talk, Business, United States, Environment, Social Entrepreneurship, Food, Work

Id: NMGjE4ITBxs

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 25 2015