Why Direct Marketing Matters

Why Direct Marketing Matters
By Catherine Gordon, NMFMA Board of Directors

The most important reason for buying food at your nearest farmers' market is the opportunity to get to know your farmer. It's also one of the most fun and enjoyable parts of any market visit. Live music is nice as a background, but it's not really necessary. Anyone old enough to be shopping for the family's food is probably too old to be interested in a bouncing inflated castle. Consumers go to market for the food. When we are able to talk directly to the farmer who produced our food, we know what we're getting.

Direct marketing is at the core of the New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association and always has been. What are consumers looking for when they go to market or join a CSA? Locally grown, farm-fresh produce, directly from the farm. The only way to be sure of what we're getting and where it came from is to talk to the producer who grew, gathered, raised, or caught the food. The only way our farmers' markets can keep our food dollars circulating in our communities, ensure that our local farmers survive and thrive, and take our food system back from the monoliths is to cultivate personal relationships between consumers and the farmers who grow the produce. That's why the New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association requires that all of its member markets meet the basic definition: "A public market place where fresh foods from a defined local area are sold by the people who have grown, gathered, raised, or caught them."

Our farmers feel the same way about direct marketing. They want to talk to their customers about what they are doing to provide fresh, healthy, real food. A middle man can't do that. Bottom line, if our local farmers are to continue farming, they must make a living. It's simple: farmers who sell direct to consumers, without going through a middle man, get a better price. Our farmers have the right to rely on our promise that they will not have to compete with vendors who have brought in produce from somewhere else. That is why many markets in New Mexico already require vendors to agree not to "resell" produce - not to purchase produce from another producer for resale at the market.

Given the expectations of farmers and consumers, the NMFMA Board of Directors has promulgated a rule that defines and prohibits "reselling" at member markets. Although the wording of the rule was hammered out, with much discussion and argument, the final rule merely restates the Association's longstanding policy and makes clear the relationship between the vendors at our markets and their market customers:

• Member markets of the NMFMA must be public markets where fresh foods from a defined local area are sold by the people who have grown, gathered, raised, or caught them. Agricultural products may also be sold by a farm representative. A farm representative is a party that has the authority to act for the farmer so as to bring the farmer's agricultural product to market. Member markets are prohibited from allowing the resale of agricultural products. Reselling is defined as agricultural products purchased by market vendors for resale to market customers.

Michael Reed, President of the NMFMA Board of Directors, explains, "Part of the intent of this rule is to establish the groundwork for trust on the part of the consumers that they are getting what we are promoting; it's to strengthen the integrity of the market."

"This rule boils down to one main idea. Our purpose is to support local agriculture and local farmers," said Eric Montgomery, member of the NMFMA Board of Directors. "We passed this rule as an extension of that idea and to ensure our members adhere to the integrity of local - as defined by individual member markets."

It's something our market vendors and our customers can rely on.

- Catherine Gordon, NMFMA Board of Directors