The Social Side of Market Organization.

by Tom Roberts, June 2013

I think we often lose sight of the fact that farmers’ markets are as much a social movement as an agricultural one. We are a social movement that is fueled by consumer awareness of the results of the corporate corruption of our food system and that of the government overseers who are supposed to serve the people. And we are a social movement populated by hundreds of thousands of agricultural and food-based entrepreneurs—of every race, gender, culture, and ethnicity—who both reject and put a lie to the mainstream culture’s stereotypes of irrelevance and insignificance of small scale food production.

Although as entrepreneurs we have developed skills in the production and marketing of our wares to a more or less high degree, we often neglect those equally critical skills that are required for us to work together. Equally necessary because it is only by successfully working together that our whole system can function. Knowing how to work together is something that once was taught in kindergarten, but often ignored after that. What most of us are left with are the paradigms for working together unconsciously absorbed from the mainstream culture, which is generally a form of top down hierarchy , whether in business, in religion, in education, in the military, or in government. Only rarely heard of are the examples of egalitarian cooperation, although there are indeed many that do exist.

We are, most of us, products of our mainstream culture who have each decided to take the road less traveled, and—to our delight—are finding a growing amount of company on our journey. Yet as we (of necessity) concentrate on developing our production and marketing techniques, we have often failed to put sufficient energy and thought into one of the vital underpinnings of our movement, that of egalitarian cooperation.

This is why so many markets have difficulties in getting a greater number of members to help out with the work load: there is too sparse an understanding of how putting in your effort helps the whole market work. One category is made up of the most successful markets that have a central cadre who themselves already have a decent level of appreciation for the value of cooperation for mutual benefit, and thus behave appropriately when it comes to shouldering the load of running the market. A second category of markets, regardless of quantity and quality of products, have only one market member who realizes what must be done, and therefore end up doing almost everything. These markets are typically in trouble when that person tires or burns out. A third category of markets rely on outside help from a nonprofit to do the heavy lifting of market organization. While the first category may be continuously struggling and even bring a few more members in the the central cadre of activists, the second two methods of organization are recipes for long term market failure because they do not actively involve those for whom the market is unquestionably the most important, the market members themselves.

What none of these markets have is a good way of teaching cooperation to their members. Providing that service, it seems to me, is where we would do best to focus our efforts for the coming 5 years: providing teachers of cooperation and teaching materials to markets and market members statewide. This would better fill an unmet need within the farmers’ market movement than anything else I can think of, even when you include providing grant-funded positions to accept SNAP or other forms of plastic.

There are many people who would offer their services (some for a fee) to MFFM to provide technical assistance to markets on how to cooperate within a group. These can be professional facilitators, religious leaders, even the best “scout leaders” who get their troops to self-organize rather than to just “follow the leader”. To be sure, everybody’s skill levels, speaking ability, and confidence are at a different level, but with some thoughtful effort these can be gently and joyfully improved with the result that some job helping out the market can be filled by everyone.

I can’t imagine there is anyone in a leadership position in any of the farmers’ markets who wouldn’t see this as of utmost importance, since a high level of membership involvement appears to be universally lacking.

Breakfast is over, gotta go pick rhubarb.

～∞～