From gate to plate

Exploring the farmers’ market phenomenon

Hamish is a regular at the Feilding farmers’ markets. A rookie chef, he cooks for a restaurant near Marton. He loves creating new food, likes talking to people and hopes to reach a bigger market with his homemade products. A selection of his pestos and tapenades is spread out in front of him, each in a different, minimalist container. A pile of chunks of chewy French-style bread from the stall next-door sits alongside open containers of pesto for sampling. We all dig in, watched anxiously by Hamish. “Good! Good!” we say with out mouths full, reaching for our wallets. In Feilding, the number of people gathered at the stall amounts to a crowd and this stuff may sell fast. “Tastes different!” declares a white-haired fellow whose wife says a month ago he wouldn’t have known pesto if it leapt off a supermarket shelf and bit him. “Even better than last week’s,” he declares. “You noticed?” says Hamish. “This time I used pistachio in the pesto.”

Something else is different this week and it isn’t Hamish’s baby sleeping under cover behind the stall: She’s often there. This week the new product is chocolate cake, two dozen moist, miniature deep-brown cakes with soft buttery icing and a glazed nut on top, sitting in tiny paper cases, priced at one dollar each. We sample one then two, and it’s the best chocolate cake we’ve ever tasted. We all decide to take the remainder home for our families but there’s a problem. They obviously won’t travel intact and Matthew hasn’t brought containers. “It’s on the agenda,” he promises. “Come back next week.”

Farmers’ market and small business researcher Dr Alan Cameron has high hopes for Hamish. “He’s able to learn on the job by selling at the market. He’s taking it slowly, isn’t over-reaching with too many new products and he’s focused on getting what he does produce absolutely right. He’s there on the spot so he can listen to what the buyers want and adapt accordingly. He’s learning how to be an entrepreneur.”

Dr Alan Cameron, a Massey graduate who is now a senior lecturer in the Department of Management, started out specialising in research into small business entrepreneurship and has since become the New Zealand authority on farmers’ markets. He thinks his appreciation probably began on a hitchhiking tour of Europe as a hungry and impoverished student in the ’60s. He stopped at a market in France but could afford only some bread. The stallholder gave him a wedge of cheese to go with it. Now his office is papered with photographs of farmers’ markets, taken in New Zealand, and in Australia and Europe on overseas trips with his wife. The Feilding market is his local but the Edinburgh market is perhaps his favourite. There the stallholders dress the part: the butcher is in blue stripes, and live music is played. He expects New Zealand markets will eventually go the same way.

Dr Cameron says the farmers’ market differs from the more common flea market. The definition of a farmers’ market is one in which farmers, growers and producers from a local area are present in person to sell their own products directly to the public. All of the products sold should be grown, reared, caught, brewed, pickled, baked, smoked or processed by the stallholder. Less quantifiably, farmers’ markets place an emphasis on quality and freshness and provide a vibrant atmosphere to make shopping a more social experience.

At a flea market the vendors are often itinerant, travelling in from other centres to sell jewellery, second hand and home made clothes, books, plants and food, usually more cheaper than you can buy them anywhere else. But Dr Cameron says at authentic farmers’ markets, crafts are generally discouraged; they are thought to convey a tacky image.

The essence of a farmers’ market, he says, is “buy local, eat seasonal, enjoy high quality food”.

There are now 26 farmers’ markets throughout New Zealand from Kerikeri to Dunedin, double the number that existed five years ago, in line with a world trend that is making a dent – but still only a very small one - into supermarkets’ grip on the sale of fresh produce.

Dr Cameron says farmers’ markets were once common in New Zealand, as well as in Europe and the United States, but were largely driven out by supermarkets, with France, Italy and Spain as notable exceptions.

Why, then, this resurgence? Clearly one element is nostalgia, but there are a host of others. There is the influence of television chefs like Rick Stein and Peta Mathias and their emphasis on fresh, seasonal ingredients. There is the rise of regional cuisines. There is the growing interest in fresh, unadulterated produce, in organics, and in sustainable agriculture. There is the farmers’ market as an adjunct to regional tourism. There is the sterile, plastic experience of supermarket shopping itself, as well as resistance to the supermarket duopoly prevailing in New Zealand.

“Supermarkets threaten to engulf other forms of retailing by combining the scale of the market with the convenience of the shop, but in recent years there has been a quiet counter-revolution. One of the driving forces is the increasing demand for better food and information about that food, by increasingly discerning consumers.”

There are economic reasons too: the consumer’s desire to cut out the middleman and buy directly from the grower and the farmer’s desire to realise a greater margin than the supermarkets will allow.

Every market has its own history, says Dr Cameron. “The Whangerei market was started by two growers who considered they could get better prices than they were receiving from supermarkets. The Hawke’s Bay market started as part of a strong initiative by an entrepreneur to maximise the food and wine potential of the region. The Feilding market was part of a wider strategy to revitalise a struggling town. The Bay of Islands market was initiated by a food writer who had moved into a growing affluent town and had seen the benefits of markets elsewhere. The Marlborough market was started by a chef concerned about the dominance of vine cultivation in the area.”

His research has also provided a closer fix on the customers. Dr Cameron says in general they are motivated by price or value for money although most are seeking quality, with price as a secondary issue. Variety is important.

“Customers seek out specialist products such as organic products, as well as rare heritage and heirloom varieties. They also appreciate having another shopping option, with the opportunity to discuss products, particularly food, face-to-face with the producer. They enjoy the sense of community that a market provides. They also rate the opportunity to contribute to the local economy.”

He is interested in the issue of price for both buyers and sellers. “People will pay a bit more at a farmers’ market for a good product. It isn’t a gamble because they’ve had a chance to sample it so they know it’s good, unlike a supermarket tomato with its looks enhanced by water spray, special lights and so on. Or a cheese, wrapped in plastic. Hamish’s tapenade, for example, may eventually cost a bit more than a supermarket dip but customers say that it tastes much better – and it gives them something different to talk about at the dinner table.”

Correspondingly, price is an issue for the seller. “Selling to the big chains, their margins were increasingly squeezed. They sell less produce at the farmers’ markets but they are often able to sell it for slightly higher prices.”

There is also the impact on the local economy. A study commissioned by the Otago Market Trust estimated that at least $750,000 was spent in the market’s first six months of operation. “This figure was multiplied by three to give an aggregate impact on Otago of $2.25 million. Because the sources of the materials are local there is less leakage and the multiplier is larger than might otherwise be expected. So they end up making a larger profit, which helps them survive in an increasingly competitive market.”

Dr Cameron says the Otago figures are consistent with other estimates of the amount of money generated by markets that stays in the local economy. Few vendors – only 12 per cent of those questioned in his studies – rely on farmers’ markets as their only distribution outlet and source of income. But fewer and fewer small growers are selling to supermarkets because of difficulty in meeting price and supply requirements.

“Some growers say they wouldn’t have survived without the markets. One used to get $3 a kg for his produce from the supermarket, which then sold it for $9 a kilo. He now sells it for $6 a kilo at the farmers’ market – a win-win for producer and customer.”

How have the supermarket chains reacted to all of this? Badly, in some cases. Dr Cameron and research colleagues at Otago University found claims and fears of blacklisting by supermarkets of producers who sell in the farmers’ markets, which they note would probably be in breach of the Commerce Act.

The release of Dr Cameron’s research coincided with the opening of the vast new Sylvia Park shopping mall in Auckland, accompanied by traffic jams and incidents of road rage. At press, the latest farmers’ market to open is in Porirua, outside Wellington, run by Wellington specialists in quality, artisan foods, Moore Wilsons. Artist Dick Frizzell has painted a mural for the market and it is expected that sellers of fine meat will eventually sport blue striped aprons. Live music is on the agenda.

The Moore Wilsons’ philosophy is in line with Alan Cameron’s. They want to provide an alternative outlet for their best suppliers, an incubator for future suppliers and, in general, to support the provision of good food.

In August Alan Cameron was a speaker at the inaugural Farmers’ Market New Zealand Association conference in Havelock North and in August he spoke at the Horticulture New Zealand conference in Auckland. Next year he will take up a position as visiting research fellow at Glasgow University’s Centre for Business History. He says it seems that in Europe and the United Kingdom, as in New Zealand, as supermarkets grow, there is a parallel growth in the demand for traditional, outdoor shopping, and an appetite for information on the phenomenon.

More malls to come

If nostalgia for more traditional shopping styles like farmers’ markets is driven by the growth in supermarkets and malls, the demand for both is set to grow, according to retail researcher Associate Professor Andrew Parsons. If anything, he says New Zealand is still “under-malled” for its population.

Dr Parsons, from the University’s Department of Commerce, says New Zealand is likely to follow trends in the United States and Britain, with the creation of even bigger malls attached to big box complexes, with more interactivity and entertainment, and add-ons such as gymnasiums, swimming pools – and even schools.

“ Malls have developed as large, covered shopping areas that seem to provide people with a pleasant, safe environment – away from pollution, politics and the weather. But the catch is that such an environment can be seen as very sterile and lacking in excitement. In most cases you can stand in a mall and not know where you are – you could be anywhere in New Zealand or anywhere in the world, for that matter. It’s all the same. Hence the growing demand for the more personal experience of visiting a farmers’ market”

He says developers are aware that some consumers are turning back to these “warmer” shopping experiences and are moving to counter this.

Dr Parsons says there are different motives for shopping: You need to buy something, you want to browse and keep up with the latest trends, or you just want to get out of the house and get some exercise. “Then there is the social reason, the opportunity to meet other people and to exchange ideas with your peer groups.

“Increasingly, people live by themselves and work in an office space by themselves. They regard going to a mall as one of the few ways available to interact with other people, to sit and socialise. Mall developers are tapping into this with tailored additional facilities, like cafes, that prolong time spent in the mall.

Retailers also have to find ways to beat off growing competition from on-line shopping. “In a large mall you might visit seven or eight dress shops and compare clothes and prices. But the Internet allows you effectively to do the same and make even wider comparisons.”

He predicts mall owners and developers will attempt to meet the Internet challenge by creating unique, interactive experiences for shoppers. “This trend started back in the late 1980s, when malls suddenly starting sprouting trees and then gathered momentum. The food courts, the attached movie complexes, the special shows staged for children in the holidays – they’re all part of extending the allure and attraction of a mall, and the time people spend in them.”

Dr Parsons says retailers will be encouraged to let people try out products in context. “Nike Town in the United States, for example, has full-sized basketball courts in its shops, so that customers can put on the clothes and the shoes and then have a go on the court before they decide to buy them. Some golf shops already have mini driving ranges in store. At the moment malls don’t like shops that sell musical instruments because they make too much noise as customers try out the products. But imagine how vibrant a mall would be if such experiences were encouraged.”

He says in the future malls may even have schools attached. “There are already crèches for the children of both staff and customers. Why not schools? And why stop there? At the University of Alberta, where I worked for a time, the business school was attached to a vast mall which contained levels of shops, theatres, swimming pools, gymnasiums and restaurants as well as student and staff apartments.”

Dr Parsons says new developments like the Sylvia Park mega mall in Auckland may seem big and modern, “but we’re only scratching the surface of what’s to come”.