Berry Vendor Fights Farmers’ Market Ban
A policy by the Ventura County Certified Farmers’ Market Assn. that prevents farmers from deciding what they sell at a local farmers’ market has one grower of organic strawberries crying sour grapes.
Phil McGrath, a 44-year-old farmer from Camarillo, says vendors at the downtown Ventura Farmers’ Market should be the ones deciding what commodities are sold. In McGrath’s case, that would be organic Chandler strawberries, and flowers.
But farmers’ market association President Molly Gean said the association has every right to determine which commodities are sold and by how many vendors, and the decision has been made that McGrath may neither sell nor give away his fruit and flowers at the market.
McGrath, who farms 30 acres once owned by his grandfather, was fined $50 by the association for violating association rules and is not allowed to sell any commodities, including the vegetables he has long harvested, until the fine is paid, Gean said.
A defiant McGrath has spent the last two Saturdays standing outside the market, handing out his berries, and collecting signatures in an effort to turn the Saturday farmers’ market into a venue where the fittest farmer survives.
He will be out again today doing the same thing.
“I am going to be giving away free strawberries, and protest the policy that the farmers’ market has on limiting the vendors, especially the local vendors, especially the vendors that have been there since the market started,” he said.
But Gean said the market is satisfying the needs of both consumers and its members.
“The state direct marketing regulations give the farmers’ markets the right to limit the type and number of products admitted into farmers’ markets,” she said.
Most farmers’ markets in the state are operated with similar commodity controls, she said.
“I sympathize with Phil, but the board’s responsibility is to the majority of the membership,” Gean said.
Her old friend disagrees.
The farmers should be left alone to decide what they sell, McGrath said. Only then will the free-enterprise system thrive.
“May the best farmer win,” he said.
