Vancouver Farmers Market should look to innovative partnerships to bolster agriculture products
Jessica Swanson
is the managing editor of the Vancouver Business Journal.
I was always secretly pleased that Vancouver beat Portland to a year-round, indoor farmers market. I went there nearly everyday, even if just for an onion.
This sort of venture seems like a no-brainer in the Pacific Northwest, especially in fertile territory like Southwest Washington and the Willamette Valley, with its dozens of family-owned farms and organic producers.
But when the VFM lost its anchor grower, Millennium Farms, and the space filled up with arts and crafts, knickknacks and souvenirs, I quit going. I just stopped, cold turkey. It wasn’t a decision I made – there was just no pull.
Granted, there is a great coffee shop there with my favorite beans and fresh bread, but I have to pass 20 coffee shops to get there, plus plug the meter when I do arrive. There are ethnic fast-food joints, but our office is on East Fourth Plain, the best spot in town for tasty Chinese, Thai and Mexican. There are gorgeous crafts from local artists – but I won’t buy these things every day. And that is the point.
What doesn’t exist on the West Side, where I live, is daily access to fresh, organic produce from local growers – not yet anyway.
Rising fuel prices and a steep rent indoors, as Megan Patrick reports on Page 3, combined with a product that spoils if shelved for too long, has kept producers away. Market Master Robert Ray has vowed to bulk up the indoor market floor space with agriculture products from small farms by year’s end, even if he has to "give it away."
A partnership with the Vancouver Food Co-op could prove fortuitous, as well as an innovative relationship with the many local Community Supported Agriculture farms. Even a unique sponsorship by Whole Foods-owned Wild Oats could fill the bill by giving the East Side market a downtown presence and bolstering the local farms it uses at the same time. But the bottom line is that the market must be affordable for growers and profitable when they get here – or they are not going to come.
Surveys and demographic studies show that most farmers market buyers are folks like me – we live nearby, we buy local and we buy often. Certainly the market will attract tourists, as other Vancouver and Clark County tourist attractions bring in the business. But tourists won’t sustain this venture – not without residents who stop there every day, even if just for an onion.
