A Healthy Crop

The sun was shining. The street musicians were playing. And Joe Avitua was brushing dust from the rough orange skins of tangerines.

He picked up each one in the bin, gave it a practiced swipe and placed it in the front of the box--all the better to lure customers to his stall at the Long Beach Farmers’ Market.

On this warm spring day, food vendors hawked their wares and a string of jewelry and handicraft booths lined the cobblestoned downtown walkway.

But at the heart of it all were the food and vegetable stands that lined the north end of the plaza. Citrus piled high, fresh eggs, radishes and honey, home-cured pickles, Oriental vegetables, mounds of artichokes, fresh-picked strawberries--a feast for the senses.

The farmers’ market comes to Long Beach each Friday, jolting the downtown with an extra burst of life. But it is only one of dozens that now dot the Southern California landscape. There are 38 alone in Los Angeles County that satisfy the criteria to be a certified farmers’ market--that is, markets where farmers grow the food they sell.

The number of such markets in California is nudging toward 300, where less than 20 years ago there were only four. While California is the runaway leader in the growing number of farmers’ markets, it is only one of many places in the nation where they are thriving.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are now more than 2,400 farmers’ markets around the country, with more springing up each day. Department officials say there are surely many more in operation that have not been tabulated, simply because there is no central clearinghouse to track such businesses.

They have become such a phenomenon in recent years that the Agriculture Department began printing a thick national directory of farmers’ markets in 1994, only to add 750 more to last year’s edition.

In many cases they have been used as a way to prime the pump for communities in need of an economic fix. The proven logic is that markets attract people, which, in turn, helps other businesses in the immediate vicinity.

So many markets now operate in the Los Angeles area that farmers gripe about the glut. They say the increasing numbers have thinned the customer base at older, established markets, forcing them to set up shop in more places to turn a profit.

“I make as much in five markets as I used to in two markets when I started out,” said Jim Van Foeken, who runs a produce stall just down the way from Avitua’s.

Still, their popularity continues to grow, both in parking lots and in cyberspace. There are now more than 200 farmers’ market sites on the Internet where fruit and vegetable prices are listed. Look up the Los Angeles farmers’ market on the Net and up pops a history of the place, complete with pictures from the old days.

What is drawing people to the stalls of these markets rather than the convenience of neighborhood supermarket aisles? The freshness of the food and the aromas filling the air are reasons often cited. But beyond that, it is a form of urban recreation in which city dwellers get a chance to mix with farmers, to talk about crops and seasons, and haggle over the prices.

There exists in these markets a kind of unhurried pace and feeling of community that are all-too-difficult to find in these hectic times.

Listen to Henry Lager, a retired teacher who was wandering through the Long Beach market the other day, checking the goods at various stalls: “The prices are more reasonable and you can get organic vegetables if you choose. You can talk to the farmers and find out about the food they grow. It becomes a social gathering when you come downtown. And on a sunny day like this, it’s a wonderful promenade.”

Or there is K. Jamerson, a student at Long Beach City College: “I like to be around people. A lot of different ethnic groups are out here. Look at all of them. And they are getting along for a change. It’s just the spirit of the thing that makes it appealing.”

For thousands of years, the marketplace was the heart of cultures around the globe, from ancient Greece to medieval Europe to Colonial America. It is no coincidence that so many of the major urban thoroughfares in the United States are named Market Street.

Those markets, though, began to decline in the post-World War II years, spurred by flight to the suburbs from the urban core and a change in how food was grown, processed and sold.

Where in past generations food for the table was dependent on what was locally grown, processing and transportation advances have allowed food to be shipped to every part of the United States in all seasons. It is not unusual for produce to travel more than 2,000 miles before it lands in the supermarket, which itself came of age in the postwar era.

Those shipments are not limited to food produced in this country: Many of the vegetables found in today’s markets come from other countries--strawberries from Mexico, asparagus from Peru, carrots from Canada, to name but a few.

California, meanwhile, had its own unique set of circumstances that put a damper on the farmers’ markets. As it moved into the lead in national food production, a number of laws were passed that imposed strict regulations on how produce could be sold. As a form of quality control, fruits and some vegetables had to conform to size, weight, container and labeling requirements to be marketed. The exception from the requirements for farmers was that they could sell from roadside stands on their own property.

Small farmers as a rule did not have the financing to get into the packing and sorting business. And it also meant they couldn’t sell less than picture-perfect produce. The effective result was the demise of farmer’ markets.

That changed in 1977, after a series of protests by farmers about the stringent laws. A set of direct marketing regulations granting farmers more leeway in how and what they could sell was issued by the Department of Food and Agriculture.

“There’s a time when things get ripe and the time then was ripe for the farmers,” said Les Portello, who was the director of the farmers’ market program for the state after the new regulations were passed. “The direct marketing concept was reborn.”

The first of the new farmers’ markets for Los Angeles County was in Gardena, which opened in 1979. “It opened with four farmers and sold out in an hour,” said Marion Kalb of the Southland Farmers’ Market Assn. “Now we have 25 farmers who go there every Saturday.”

Now, there are many farmers’ markets, from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills to Pasadena. Civic leaders have pushed for them because they have seen what they do for other communities.

One case is the market at San Dimas, a middle-class community east of Los Angeles. The farmers’ market has become such a draw for the town’s Main Street each Wednesday that other businesses, many of them antique shops, have seen sales improve simply because of the number of people who stroll past display windows while they are shopping for fruits and vegetables.

“It’s become a focal point for the community,” said Christopher Cash, the city’s economic development coordinator.

Another more striking example is Penn Yan, N.Y., a tiny community in the poorest county of the state. Facing an economic crisis because of factory layoffs, the little town took a gamble in 1987 and invested in a single 60-by-100-foot market building.

Today, there are eight buildings in the complex, 230 vendors and 10,000 shoppers on a good day. The market is now the largest employer in the county.

And in the Bay Area city of Vallejo, the farmers’ market is given a great deal of the credit for reviving a dying downtown.

In Los Angeles and elsewhere, the markets have been a help of another sort: bringing affordable produce to the needy. Many of the farmers’ markets, including the one in Long Beach, accept food stamps for their produce. The number of food stamps taken in by the farmers rises dramatically around the first of the month, when the stamps are distributed.

And there is also a federal program in which eligible mothers are given a onetime grant of $20 to be used at farmers’ markets as a way of encouraging the purchase of fresh fruits and vegetables. Twenty-six states around the country, including California, provide the matching funds for the program, which has met with some success in introducing the concept that fresh food is a key ingredient to healthy children.

“I’ve had women and children come to the farmers’ market who did not know what a fresh green bean looked like or how to cook corn,” said Pam Roy of Santa Fe, N.M., the president of the National Direct Marketers Assn.

The farmers’ market has, indeed, been a boon to small farmers, giving them a chance to cut out the middle man and up their profit margin. (The produce at farmers’ markets may be cheaper than supermarkets, but not dramatically so. The emphasis, rather, is on ripeness, flavor and unusual produce, such as Japanese apple pears.)

But eliminating that middle man also means farmers must lead the lives of gypsies, traveling from market to market and spending most of the week away from home. And on the days when they are home, it means not rest but picking for the next round at the market. Most of them make the bulk of their income through these direct sales.

For Avitua, it means hitting four markets in four days, beginning the trek by driving all night from the tiny town of Exeter in the Central Valley. His route brings him to Glendale, Long Beach, Pasadena and Alhambra before he is ready to return home Sunday afternoon. It also means two nights of motels a week, which does not dim his enthusiasm for the work.

“I really like it. It’s not only the money. I also enjoy just being here,” he said. “And besides, at home the work never ends.”

For Van Foeken, the route brings him from Ivanhoe, also in the Central Valley, to San Dimas, Victorville, Upland and Long Beach, where he does the Friday market and another on Saturday in the northern part of the city. His wife does three more in the Visalia area.

Van Foeken has been farming 32 acres of land near Visalia for 17 years and he’s been doing the round of farmers’ markets for the last 10, since taking a chance and quitting his job with the local water district. He cashed in his retirement fund, bought a big truck and began peddling his fruit most every week of the year.

“The farmers’ market is making me a viable, successful farmer,” he said. “By success, I don’t mean rich. We love what we do. We have an environment we like. It’s a lifestyle and a way of living.”