Oregon farmers markets making steady comeback from pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a heavy blow to Oregon’s farmers markets. According to the Oregon Farmers Market Association, visitor numbers and sales both dropped by nearly 50% between 2019 and 2020. But as reported in the Capital Press, the association’s most recent survey shows an estimated 3.5 million visits to farmers markets in 2022. That’s down from 4.2 million in 2019, but an improvement from the 2020 low of 2.2 million.

Ashley Hess is the executive director of the Oregon Farmers Market Association. She joins us with more details on how markets across the state are bouncing back.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a heavy blow to Oregon’s farmers markets. According to the Oregon Farmers Markets Association, visitor numbers and sales both dropped by nearly 50% between 2019 and 2020. But as reported in the Capital Press recently, the association’s latest survey shows that attendance is picking back up. Ashley Hess is the executive director of the Oregon Farmers Markets Association. She joins us with more details on how markets across the state are doing and how they might be adapting at the same time. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Ashley Hess: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Miller: How were Oregon’s farmers markets doing before the pandemic in terms of growth or visitors or sales?

Hess: Really well. They were growing really rapidly and I think that really shows a reflection of what consumers are looking for, right? People are looking for local, fresh, healthy food and that was showing up at farmers markets. They were definitely growing in count. We were seeing more markets throughout the state. And then the pandemic happened and we saw quite the hit at our markets.

Miller: Do you have a theory as to why it was as big as it was ‒ 50% from one year to the next ‒ when I would have thought that among so many different aspects of life, farmers markets largely are outside. I mean, that seems like the one of the things that you could do, you could mask up if you want to, you could be outside, you could buy your tomatoes. Why was it such a big hit nevertheless?

Hess: Yeah, it’s really interesting. People are surprised to hear that markets took a hit during the pandemic. One of those things is early on in the pandemic, we didn’t know a lot about COVID, right? People were behaving really differently. I remember putting my groceries outside, spraying them with sanitizer.

Miller: It seems like a decade ago, but I guess it wasn’t.

Hess: In a farmer’s market, people are handing you their food. There’s not bags, things aren’t preserved. I would even say that a lot of, most of it is fresh produce. And I think that was something also that is handled by farm workers in the field and I think that people didn’t know. Also there were limitations on how many people could go. We were still social distancing. A lot of markets had to rope off their perimeter. They expanded, they needed to find more space. And so they were letting less customers in to begin with.

Miller: Did that lead some farmers to do different things, to directly reach out to customers? I mean, they could always sell to distributors or sell to grocery stores. But if they wanted a kind of proxy for a farmer’s market, what other options did they have?

Hess: Yeah, we saw a huge wave of online markets. So folks could order online and then drive through and pick up, and that was a big pivot. Farmers aren’t always the most tech savvy, not to say that they’re not. There’s a lot of them that are, but traditionally they’re not. And so shifting to an online model, right when the pandemic happened, was a big shift and our organization was able to help support that. But we saw that, we saw a lot of home baking, people making bread, people pivoting to what they were providing at the markets, selling flour if they had access to flour and selling different things that people maybe couldn’t access in their grocery stores.

Miller: How much of that has remained even as so much of public life has returned?

Hess: I couldn’t say exactly. I mean, I would say that farmers markets look a bit different. We see more prepared food. A lot of the regulations around what food can be sold and produced at a farmers market have changed. We have the cottage baking bills, lots of rules and so you can sell more variety at a farmer’s market right now. So it’s hard to say which came first.

Miller: And is that another way to get more revenue? I mean, if you have a kind of value added product, are you actually going to make more as a farmer than selling the raw materials?

Hess: It depends. It depends on the materials. If it’s a zucchini, processing it will probably cost more to process and pickle it, but it also extends the shelf life of a product. You can use seconds, something that’s not the most beautiful zucchini can be sliced up and made into pickled zucchini. So it just depends. Value added products are a great way to diversify what you’re selling to customers, to bring in new customers and to market something that is shelf stable.

Miller: How much have farmers markets numbers bounced back since their 2020 lows?

Hess: Oh gosh, so much. We’re not… we’re definitely much higher than in 2020, during the pandemic, but we’re not quite… we’re still down about 13% from where we were the year before. And our organization has this really unique data. We started on this research project the year before the pandemic, unrelated to the pandemic, obviously. So we don’t have really great crowd counts before that, before 2019. But we’re seeing, it’s still only 13% down, which is great. Revenue is getting really close.

Miller: 13%, and what is that? That’s the number of visitors to a market?

Hess: The number of visitors.

Miller: OK.

Hess: So we were at 4.2 before.

Miller: And that, more or less tracks with revenue totally generated from those markets?

Hess: Yeah. So the year before the pandemic, revenue was almost $61 million across the state, which is a lot. That revenue is going directly to farmers, and now it’s about $54 million. So not quite there. But then the shoppers, we’re seeing more shoppers and that has to do, I think there’s more farmers markets right now, which is wonderful. We’re seeing a lot more markets throughout the state.

Miller: Are vendors participating at the same rates as they were? I mean, it seems like shoppers are coming back. Are farmers coming back?

Hess: Farmers are, yeah. So small businesses, right now we’re the closest recovery that we’ve seen since before the pandemic and so that’s great to see. Small businesses thrive at a farmers market, especially agriculturally based ones. If you sell your food to a normal method grocery store or cannery, the farmer is getting less than 15 cents of that dollar. So every dollar that we spend on food, traditional methods, a farmer gets less than 15 cents of that. At a farmers market, they’re getting more than 90 cents of that. It’s going directly to those farmers and they’re usually spending that money within their community.

Miller: That discrepancy is amazing. But I imagine that there are added costs for the farmer to truck their stuff to that market, to pay the people who are selling it. So, it’s not like they get all that 90% and it’s pure profit, right? They still have to end up taking some of that money just to be able to sell at the market?

Hess: Sure. Actually I think that it’s less because they’re traveling much shorter distances. Usually markets, they travel less than 50 miles. Small farmers will be vending at their own market.

Miller: They’re not paying employees.

Hess: So while they still need to pay themselves, of course, they’re not always paying employees. And either way it’s a, markets are usually pretty short. They’re less than 6 hours and so your staff time is pretty low there, yeah.

Miller: So what are the reasons somebody wouldn’t take part in a farmer’s market? I mean, the way you’re describing it, it seems like a no brainer.

Hess: It does. I agree.

Miller: But I imagine there are plenty of farmers who are not taking part. What are their reasons?

Hess: Well, most of agriculture in Oregon is hay, grain, animal feed. You’re not going to sell that at a farmers market. It’s also the customer count, right? So markets have great attendance rates. A lot of customers go, you get to directly interact with your customers. But if you’re growing 500 acres of zucchini, I’m using zucchini a lot in this reference, I don’t know why, it’s zucchini season, I guess. You’re not going to be able to sell all of that at a farmers market, no matter what.

Miller: You have to enter the commodity market.

Hess: Yes, exactly. So, it’s really an accessible entry point for small, beginning farmers. And we see that reflected in the vendors at the farmers market. It’s a really wonderful entryway into small farming.

Miller: Has recovery been consistent across the state? I guess I’m thinking in particular about rural areas versus more urban ones.

Hess: Yeah, that’s hard to tell. It’s hard to parse out from our data, but we are seeing pretty much across the board that, yes, the revenue is up. What we’re seeing differently in the rural areas is that the vendor counts are not quite coming back the same way that they are here in urban areas.

Miller: So how do you account for that?

Hess: I’m not sure. It might be the changing landscape across all industries. More people, a few people shifted out to the country during the pandemic, but we’re seeing more and more people flock to urban areas and I think that might just be reflected in our farmers markets.

Miller: We asked listeners whether they shop at their local farmers markets and why. Maya Taylor said, “Yes. Our family’s been shopping weekly at the Hillsdale market for over a decade as well as the Shemanski Park market downtown near my office. The produce and meat are much higher quality than what’s available in most grocery stores. And I want to support our local Oregon farmers.” Alice Kollinzas said, “Of course, have you seen produce at the grocery store? Direct from farmers lasts longer and tastes better.” Larry Makovina wrote, “We gave up mostly because of crowds but especially because of oblivious moms with strollers.” OK, Larry.

Hess: I’ve been one of those moms.

Miller: Yeah, but babies have to be pushed around by moms and by dads. What are some of the success stories from the last few years? I mean, markets that you think have been innovative or somehow just exceeded expectations?

Hess: Yeah, a couple of examples. The Lane County farmers market down in Eugene, they’ve partnered with the city and they now have a beautiful building in just the heart of the city and the city helps support that. And so having an indoor space that a farmer’s market can operate makes a huge difference. All farmers markets are out of doors, which is wonderful and lovely. But we’re in Oregon and so we see a big weather impact and having an indoor space is wonderful. It’s a direction I’d love to see a lot of markets go and also partnering with the city, I think really speaks to how community-centered farmers markets are. They really support their local community. And then out on the coast,

Florence farmers market is just a beautiful market. It looks like a postcard to begin with, but they’re also doing an online market in the winter. And I think that’s wonderful. It supports their farmers in the off season and also keeps their customers engaged throughout the year.

Miller: How many markets are all year round? Both of those examples that you came up with, there are versions of year round or at least the possibility, right, being indoors? How common is that?

Hess: It’s growing. It’s definitely growing. We’re definitely encouraging it. Obviously, the climate is impacting farmers really intensely and the growing season is changing here in Oregon. The weather is changing. We’re seeing much more extreme weather. We just received a grant from the State of Oregon for $2.5 million to help make farmers markets more climate resilient.

Miller: What does a climate resilient farmers market mean? What does it look like?

Hess: It’s more stable. So if a farmers’ market has to close because of wildfire, winds, high temperatures, which we’re seeing so much more of lately, they lose their revenue, and farmers markets are tiny. They’re all nonprofit organizations. They operate on a shoestring or volunteer budget. And so when they lose a week, one day of their… it’s a really hard revenue loss. So just making them more sustainable, resilient, and then also giving them some support around cooling stations, being able to go indoors if they need to, with partnerships like that, and then training around climate resiliency and support around their vendors and how to have more climate resilient growing.

Miller: Have markets actually closed down because of smoke or excessive heat?

Hess: Yes. Yeah, we see excessive heat closures for concerns of safety, for not just the vendors there, but also for shoppers. We’ve seen that quite a bit and that’s definitely a trend we’re seeing growing from our census every year. And then wildfire smoke, of course. Yeah, you can’t be outside, and you can’t ask workers to be outside for six to eight hours either when the wildfire smoke is really dangerous. So we do see a lot of closures and that’s continuing to grow as well. And that’s something that markets, they have to assess really quickly and with a small team, that can be really difficult to do. So we’re really working to train and prepare markets to make those judgment calls.

Miller: I mean, it seems like the only real solution there would be huge shed-like buildings that are somehow available only to be used one or two days a week. That seems like a big ask, right?

Hess: There’s a lot of buildings not in use on the weekends and not in use during farmers markets hours, too.  We see a lot of great partnerships with schools and churches. And so we’re really working with our markets to kind of create those organic relationships within their community, places they can call on and set up that have great parking, have great visibility and also maybe have good air filtration systems as well that they can pivot to really quickly to set up their markets indoors, so customers can come safely as well as the vendors.

Miller: What options are there for lower income people who want to be able to eat the tastiest, healthiest produce that’s available? Because if farmers are gonna be paid living wages, produce is actually, it’s not cheap. Often it’ll be more expensive than some commodity tomato you can find at the supermarket.

Hess: Very true. Unhealthy food is cheaper. That’s a fact. And there’s a lot of reasons behind that. Farmers markets, you can find the most nutrient dense food. It’s traveled… it’s peak freshness, traveled less. Your grocery store food is healthy and wonderful, but it’s traveled an average of 1,200 miles to get where it’s going. It also has to be a really shelf- stable item, and have a longer shelf life and that takes away from the nutrient density. So you’re getting peak freshness at farmers markets and the food is actually ‒ there’s lots of studies ‒ but it’s reasonably, it’s similar to what you’re buying at the grocery store.

But we also have a lot of food assistance programs at farmers markets, and I’m so glad you asked. SNAP benefits are accepted at almost 90 markets across the state. So if you’re a SNAP shopper, head out to your farmers market, you can get that like most nutrient dense fruit and vegetables there.

And then most of them also operate Double Up Food Bucks, which is this amazing program that the Farmers Market Fund puts on and it matches dollar-for-dollar SNAP benefits. So if you’re shopping with SNAP dollars, you can go and you can spend every dollar of your SNAP benefits that you spend at the farmers market, Farmers Market Fund will match that up to $20. So you can just double your money and get a lot more fruits and vegetables to take home to your family.

Miller: Ashley Hess, thanks very much.

Hess: Thank you so much.

Miller: Ashley Hess is the executive director of the Oregon Farmers Markets Association.

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