Tag: farmers market

Thoughts on plastic bag bans from an organic potato farmer

Clamorous demands for a plastic bag ban at Vancouver farmers’ markets have resulted in… a (pending) plastic bag ban at market. The association that runs the markets at which we have been selling potatoes for over 25 years recently announced that starting with the 2020 season all single-use plastic bags will be banned. I have been privately fuming about it for ages, with no proper articulation. The formal announcement has forced me to publicly admit that I have issues with the new policy.

First some groundwork. Let me lay this on you. I sell a lot of things in plastic. Potatoes mainly, but also carrots, beets, parsnips, and even on the odd occasion broccoli, beans and basil. Retailing with plastic is effective and efficient. It’s not completely brainless and some merchandizing skills are required. The tops should be tucked under the bags, for example, or the display can end up looking like a farmers’ market stand that sells plastic bags, as opposed to potatoes. The bags should be of good value with the price stickers visible. You should know when to use a twist tie for closure and when to use a knot, and what type of knot. The bag should contain no unsightly culls. There ought to be a bulk option right beside the ordered heap of pre-packaged product. Half the customers will choose one, half will choose the other.

Things in plastic bags sell. Every retailer knows this. That’s why you see in the grocery store that everything is packaged, particularly in the produce department. If you want to sell more, put it in plastic. I think too, consumers have been convinced that things in plastic are more hygienic so that adds to the appeal and bolsters demand for plastic bagging. It’s entirely about boosting sales, however.

So to continue with the summary of my current situation, plastic bags are a major part of our retailing plan at farmers’ market. I rely on them. If I want something to sell, I put it in a plastic bag. Boom. It sells. My farm depends on farmer’s market sales for almost 80% of our revenues and at least half those sales come from things in plastic: We make it convenient, attractive and of good value. We are managing to come up with lots of packaging alternatives, but none check all the boxes. The pending plastic bag ban is causing me to feel (and this is just for starters) highly irritated, somewhat stressed, and quite mis-understood.

A mild yet persistent panic over-rides everything: how am I going to maintain sales at market if I can’t use plastic bags? I have known this was coming for a few years but now it is officially imminent, and I still don’t have a good replacement.

My other feelings include indignation and not a little derision: how dare anyone who has never tried to sell potatoes in the rain demand a plastic bag ban. You can’t just put them in paper. A paper bag containing heavy potatoes is going to be very disappointing at some future possibly inconvenient and ruinous point, even in only slightly moist weather. The more fickle customer is going to pass on potatoes in soggy paper. There are a lot of that type of customer.

This line of thought leads to a further point of indignation: why is it okay to impede my ability to compete in the retail environment? People need to understand that we feel ourselves slightly in competition with grocery stores who have a lot of very cheap potatoes, which they sell in plastic bags, because that’s how potatoes sell best. I have customers on the bubble to whom convenience and price almost outweigh taste and quality, and we will lose them. Resentment bubbles in my bosom…

…followed by more derision: what exactly do you mean when you glibly say “single-use plastic bag ban”, which appears to be the go-to wording of this pending policy? It sounds a little jingo-y, to my ears, and it’s semantically weak.

How about those produce roll-bags. They don’t have holes. They get used again. And again. Especially to carry potatoes and carrots in damp weather, and to store them at home. You know, it has been a long, long time since there was no plastic in the household. Before plastic bags, homes featured things like root-storage rooms, and somebody doing daily cooking and shopping. Freshly dug, delicate, oh-so-tasty nugget potatoes store well in a plastic bag in the bottom crisper drawer OR in a log-walled, dirt floor roothouse. Do people really know how to live without plastic? It’s kind of a big deal. Anyways, I am pretty sure those roll-bags are included in this ban.

As another aside, because it is irresistible and the resentment has briefly bubbled over, are the same people also calling for a ban on plastic dog-poop bags? Oh? What’s that? You have a dog? And you think those dog poop bags aren’t rife with environmental issues and that your dog poop is pure? Bah. Pick it up with paper, why don’t you.

I guess I think demands for plastic bag bans are thoughtless and not a little frenzied. Seems crazy to expect a little farmer like me to have to re-invent packaging, and that having done so, it will matter. I guess I don’t want to have to go through this with my 600 customers a week when the other 4 million people in the Lower Mainland are being offered, and are voluptuously consuming, singularly useless plastics galore at the grocery store.

I don’t think anyone should feel like an environmental champion because they have been successful in their calls for a plastic bag ban at farmers’ market. This is, and you will forgive the expression, very small potatoes, and the price is being paid by a small, local organic family farm. Hardly heroic.

Having said all that (and perhaps I have said too much), I am going to stop using the plastic bags with holes. I accept this. We have been thinking creatively for some time now, even before we heard the baying calls for a ban. It will cost us money, both in terms of lost sales and replacement packaging, but obviously I don’t think plastic bags with holes in them are useful beyond the single use for which they are so well designed. They are the junk food of packaging. We can do better. And I can even recognize that I might be wrong about the consequences.

It would be super nice in return if people could check their calls for this ban. Farmers’ markets themselves are already on the cutting (and bleeding) edge of the quest for low environmental impact business operations. Environmental glory for all can certainly be found there. I am in awe of and deeply appreciative of the efforts that people will make to avail themselves of well-grown food at farmers’ markets. Speaking of plastic alone, a farmers’ market customer must barely use any compared to a grocery store shopper. Should we not be boasting about that? And enticing more of them over, rather than scaring them off?

It is a simple exercise to find something environmentally devastating in someone else’s lifestyle. I try to resist (dog-poop bag rant an exception to the rule), because…well…sometimes it is none of my business.

Anna Helmer farms with family and friends in the Pemberton Valley and dearly loves to pile it high and watch it fly.

July 31, 2019
Why the Farmers Market is more than just a shopping experience

In the spring, I sprinkled a small mason jar of biodynamic preparation 500 under my fruit trees and around my garden beds, just as Anna Helmer had shown me. There didn’t seem to be a very specific science to it, although I videoed her doing it and watched it over several times to make sure I had the insouciant wrist flick just right.

It seemed kind of random and messy, which should suit my style to a tee, but I felt weirdly anxious that I would screw it up by flinging the droplets around too wildly, causing the cosmic magic that had been channeled into this precious jar of “water” to elude my little patch of earth.

When Helmer’s Farm hosted an open house in late April, I was there, dragging the kid and his best friend, who amused themselves for hours, eating potatoes cooked over a fire, gently terrorizing the ducks, and eventually holing up in the sandpit.

They also took a turn stirring the great vat of biodynamic preparation, which I suspect was part of the Helmers’ agenda for hosting an open house – to crowdsource some sweat equity from the farm visitors.

I took my turn with the stirring stick, thinking I was really helping things along until Doug Helmer took over and showed me how it was really done, the vigorous stirring that must take place for several hours, creating vortexes, then disrupting them by swirling the water the opposite direction, channeling a winter-buried cow horn full of celestial magic into a kind of homeopathic preparation for the soil.

Once again, as I yielded the stick and accepted a small jar of preparation, it became apparent that I was benefitting a lot more than I was contributing. But as my farmer friends keep reminding me: if there isn’t a willing consumer at the other side of the field, their work is for naught. It might feel imbalanced, when I see how hard they work, but supporting that work makes you an important partner.

Charles Massy is a 60-something year old Australian pastoralist, self-professed shit-disturber and the author of Call of the Reed Warbler, who has become a growing voice for regenerative agriculture. He contends that, given agriculture influences several major earth systems, adopting a more regenerative approach offers the biggest potential to save the planet from the climate crisis. Regenerative farming is “nearly two and a half times better at burying carbon in the ground than anything else” in large part because of its commitment to nurturing soil health and rebuilding soil organic matter.

He came to these views from the near-decimation of his family farm, and its slow recovery into a commercially thriving business, through the trial and adoption of many regenerative practices. A PhD in his 50s helped provide a framework for his ideas.

Massy sees regenerative agriculture’s success as being dependent on farmers who shift their practices to become part of this solution. But equally, it’s on consumers. The movement will only work if the farmers’ products are supported by the urban community. “It’s a two-way partnership.”

Anna Helmer and her family have been growing for Farmers’ Markets for 20 years. She acknowledges that it’s easy for consumers to hit the weather-insulated grocery store or order up home delivery from SPUD, but contends that farmers’ markets offer one key advantage – something she has come to think of as ‘mutual appreciation.’ She writes, “This is an energy generated at the point of contact between primary producer and end consumer at market, notably at the transaction stage. I take your money, you take my potatoes. We are both appreciative of the other. The feeling builds each week, from season to season and year to year and really can’t be re-created in other retail environments.”

It’s the spark of contact that makes magic. Direct, human to human, contact. Built into that transfer of energy – my money, your product, eye contact, appreciation – is the recognition that we are interdependent, that through this simple interaction, we are defending the life force, and creating a more beautiful planet together.

Every Friday, from June until October, the Pemberton Farmers Market offers the opportunity for these kinds of sparks to fly. Helmer’s Farm is there, as well as Four Beat Farm, Devine Gardens, Willowcraft Farm, Blackwater Creek Orchard, Spray Creek Ranch and Rainshadow & Seed to Culture. The Square Root Food Truck is back, alongside Whistler Elixir, Nidhi’s Cuisine, Rosalind Young’s gypsy wagon the RomniBolta (Rosalind Young), Birken House Bakery, and new this year, Lori Ternes. You can also pick up From the Garden Shed’s lavender, herbal remedies from Evelyn Coggins, enjoy a massage from Inner Space Massage, or browse PawWow Pet Products, Rock the Feather, Gallup Pottery, Oh Suzana’s glassware, Betty Mercer’s repurposed silver and Aenahka Creations’ leatherwear.

But it’s not just about shopping. With community groups setting up, live musicians playing each week, and a host of special events, from Bard in the Barn, to the Zucchini Derby, Slow Bike Race and Stone Soup celebration, the magic of the Market is really in the gathering.

“Our vendors work together almost like a family and the overall community spirit makes it a welcoming event,” says Market Manager Molli Reynolds. “The barn is such a lovely structure that eliminates the need for individual tents and that brings us all together ‘under one roof’.”

That community vibe was recognized last year when the Pemberton Farmers Market was awarded Farmer’s Market of the Year 2018, in the medium category, from the BC Association of Farmers Markets. Yes, our little community Farmers Market is the best of its size in BC.

Because magic is a joint effort. Creative sparks, like any kind of new life, require the DNA of more than one human to come together. Which is why Fridays under the Barn are one of my favourite kinds of gathering. The raw ingredients are all there – fresh produce, food and drinks and treats, live music, play zones, community organizations, great people. Just add yourself, and see what happens.

June 14, 2019