Back when I was growing up on 20+ acres in Northeast Ohio, I would never have dreamed that being a farmer would someday be cool. That day is here.
Farmville on Facebook now boasts more than 81 million “farmers”, and growing every day. This means more people are virtual farmers than real farmers.
Farmville is a place where the sun always shines, there’s no manure, no messy slaughterhouse, your perfect crops mature in a few hours to a couple of days, and if you get busy with your real life or job and forget to harvest in time, you can simply spray your crops with magical “unwither” and voila, they’re fresh and productive again.
We all know this is anything but the real world of farming.
What is real today is consumer demand to buy local. There are a record number of farmers’ markets in the state of Maryland this year and not enough farmers to go around, although more recreational farmers are popping up every day.
If you’ve ever been to the North Beach Friday Night Farmers’ Market, you can see this in action. If you haven’t, better get there early because the lines start forming at 5:30 for the market opening at 6:00 p.m. on Friday nights. Most vendors are sold out by 7:00 p.m. The market opens for its third season May 15 and continues through October 1, 2010.
There was a standing room only crowd at the recent 2010 Maryland Farmers’ Market Conference in Annapolis, hosted by the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA), which I attended as the founder and manager of the North Beach Friday Night Farmers’ Market. Maryland Ag Secretary Buddy Hance, of Calvert County expressed his amazement at the turnout as well.
One interesting tidbit I picked up at the conference was a growing controversy over what “local” really means. “Locally grown” sounds like a no-brainer to me. When you see this claim at a farmers’ market, a grocery store, or on a restaurant menu, you think the item is grown by a local farmer, somewhere nearby. Apparently that’s not always the case.
To jump on the bandwagon of this “buy local” craze, some folks are apparently pushing the boundaries so far that the Maryland Legislature is taking up a bill this session to define what locally grown really means.
House Bill 421 http://mlis.state.md.us/2010rs/billfile/HB0421.htm would authorize Secretary Hance to adopt standards to regulate the use of the terms “locally grown” and “local” to advertise or identify an agricultural product; and prohibiting a person from advertising or identifying an agricultural product in violation of the standards.
From what we learned at the conference, some folks are claiming that products grown in New Jersey, or even farther away, are “local” to Maryland.
It’s sad when you have to have a state law defining what “locally grown” and “local” mean. What was even more surprising was when MDA officials said that they were pleased that Wegman’s, Whole Foods, and Giant have said they will not oppose the legislation. That raises the question in my mind: what would it have said about them if they did?
article by:
Diane Burr, Chair of Events for the Town of North Beach, Founder of the North Beach Friday Night Farmers’ Market http://www.northbeachevents.com