Greenmarket

For the farmers that have fueled its success, Greenmarket has been a godsend. Several years ago, a study concluded that, were it not for Greenmarket, nearly 85% of its vendors would be out of business and 30,000 acres of farmland would have been turned into subdivisions and shopping malls.

Michael believes that Greenmarket—and its emphasis on multiple municipal partnerships, high standards, and ongoing innovation—is ripe for spreading to smaller metropolitan areas. “I think that our model, where farmers are required to come to the markets at least twenty- five percent of the time and sell only what they grow, is absolutely replicable. It’s going to become more replicable as industrial agriculture changes in the next few decades.”

Greenmarket’s emphasis on entrepreneurship more than fundraising is also replicable and has been critical to its stability and long-term growth. “All our core programming is provided by our farmers’ fees,” notes Michael. “That helps us know we’re still going to be around. We know what to expect from year to year because we’re not dependent on outside sources of funds.”

But as Greenmarket has grown and evolved over the past three decades, it has faced several ongoing challenges:

• Managing Growth: Greenmarket has opened and closed many sites, learning valuable lessons about how to appropriately allocate resources, evaluate success, and prepare for the future. “Don’t grow too fast, and invest in the markets that you have,” cautions Michael. “When you open a new market, do it deliberately and slowly. If it takes longer than you hoped for, that’s okay. You have to do it on a timeline that makes sense for you, not on the timelines you may be pressured to use. Even if someone is pushing and pushing, if it doesn’t work once you start, that won’t help anybody.”
  
  
• Managing Relationships: Despite operating out of CENYC from its inception, Greenmarket’s relationship with the City has required plenty of hands-on management. “Just because the traffic commissioner loves you doesn’t mean the traffic cop will,” Michael notes. “These two levels don’t always speak to each other or share the same goals, vision, and priorities.” Effective relationships with residents, community boards, merchant associations, and community-based organizations are just as critical. It takes significant time and effort to coordinate this complex web of relationships, but doing so successfully is critical to ensuring new markets find homes and existing markets serve their missions.
  
  
• Enforcement: “Our producer-only and producer- at-market rules, which are pretty strict, make us distinguishable and contribute to our success,” Michael notes. But they also require enforcement. “If you’re selling someone else’s products and passing them off as your own, you’ll receive a fine and a one-week suspension from the market.” He cautions that “the farmers have to be a part of the decision-making process that governs them.”
  
  
• Adaptability: Greenmarket created and later rescinded certain rules and regulations. “What worked one year,” says Michael, “may not work ten years down the road. You need a system and a structure that allows you to be flexible and to adapt over time. For example, we don’t currently allow cooperatives into our market. I think we could still be a producer-only market and include producer cooperatives.”
  
  
• Meeting the Mission: Despite the organization’s success, the sheer scale of the New York City metropolitan area affords huge opportunities for expansion. Michael wants to increase the number of markets that accept EBT and food stamps (SNAP), and raise the usage of these programs by low-income customers. He’d like to get more local food into institutions like hospitals and schools. And he has his eye on the next generation of eaters, producers, community organizers, and policymakers. “We need to expand our educational programming. We currently work with three thousand kids a year, but we want to expand our Youthmarket program and our curricula to include more visits to farms and kitchens.”
  

When Greenmarket first started, Michael says that some residents were less than excited to have a market sited in their neighborhood. “There was a whole NIMBY, or Not in My Back Yard, reaction to our markets.” But this changed over time. “Now everyone feels they want a farmers market. And there is a real opportunity to use programs like Greenmarket to employ a lot of folks, build community, improve health, and sustain our environment.”

Nongovernmental organizations, and other members of the Abingdon community view AHN. “It has gone,” says Anthony, “from, at best, a sort of grudging acceptance of our existence to somewhere between a willing partnership and very enthusiastic engagement. All of this adds up to farmers having better opportunities and getting more balanced advice, with more emphasis on local access to good food.”