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To market we go

Farmers' markets have significant impact on local economies
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It's possible that farmers' markets will one day make it into the English lexicon with as much blasé as grocery stores.

For now, even after a major expansion of markets throughout North America, they're still considered novel, unique and even somewhat temporary - as if they could someday vanish. Popularity and history aside, straight economics indicates that will never happen.

Whistler's Farmers' Market, which kicks off the summer season on Sunday, June 19, draws an average of 2,000 people per market. That success led to the decision this year by the board to add another market on Wednesdays.

"It's purely food focused," said Whistler Farmers' Market board member and municipal councillor Chris Quinlan. "The board decided that there was enough desire amongst the membership to have a mid-week market and that they could probably try and fulfill one of the mandates of the market which is to make more locally grown produce available for the people in Whistler."

Unlike the Sunday markets, which have an average of 80 vendors, the Wednesday market will have 20 to 25 merchants from the market's catchment area between Lions Bay and Lytton.

Getting into the market is not as simple as showing up. Whistler, like most of the markets around the province, juries its vendors, ensuring quality product that is 100 per cent made, baked or grown within the corridor.

"You can't be bringing in T-shirts from Taiwan and just because you've silk-screened them, call them local," said Quinlan. "We look at what the product is - we don't want to have 15 bakers because it needs to be successful - the merchants need an opportunity to be successful yet there's still enough variety for the customers when they come up."

To sell, vendors can either commit to a full summer season for $900, which works out to be about $50 per market, or buy a package of market days for around $80 per event.

Nationally, farmers' markets had 28 million shopper visits in 2008, with patrons spending an average of $32.06 per visit and another $18.44 in additional expenditures in the local community. In British Columbia, the most thorough survey examining the economic impact of farmers' markets on British Columbia's economy was completed in 2006, and even then the numbers pointed to a growing trend. At that time, farmers' markets were worth $118.5 million to the provincial economy, and that was before major media campaigns promoted the 100 Mile Diet, the slow food movement and the debate of local over organic. The most recent national stats from 2009 show the impact of farmers markets on the Canadian economy hovering somewhere around $3.09 billion.

It wasn't always like that. Pemberton mayor and proprietor of North Arm Farm Jordan Sturdy remembers standing under a tent in the rain, alone and without a customer in sight at the first Whistler Farmers' Market in 1993.

"All the stuff that's there now wasn't always there, so we didn't have as much reason for people to visit in the summer," he said. "The growth of the market in some degree parallels the growth of the summer business in Whistler."

Back then the market didn't have the tourism buzz or local draw that it does today - much of the upper village infrastructure now in place was but a twinkle in the municipality's eye.

According to Louise Walker, manager of research for Tourism Whistler, last summer one in four Whistler tourists came to town for arts and cultural activities and the farmers' market was the most popular of the options available to them with 33 per cent attending the Sunday event. The previous year it drew 26 per cent.

"We do find that all these arts and culture activities are really good for enhancing the whole Whistler experience so the farmers' market is a great example," said Walker.

Sturdy sells 25 per cent of his produce at farmers' markets in the Sea to Sky corridor. He, like other businesses that participate in the markets, depends on the sales as part of an overall business strategy. In tough economic times, small to medium enterprises are more likely to consider alternative sales methods - such as farmers' markets. So while the rise of markets can be attributed to public interest and education, they're also a viable new way for entrepreneurs to make a living.

"When the economy takes a downturn, people who are having hard economic times at home think 'What can I do to make more money?' and 'What kind of handmade product can I take to a market?' so the lineups to get into farmers' markets are growing and we are actually having to turn people away in some instances," said Rachelle Leroux, a long time farmer, market vendor and director with the BC Association of Farmers' Markets. "That's definitely doubled since the economic downturn started. It's a very interesting stigma."

The increase of regional tourist traffic is a natural offshoot of soft economies - a result of people forfeiting expensive, long haul vacations for adventures closer to home. This, coupled with the soaring interest in locally produced goods, makes for big business in the farmers' market industry.

The rise of farmers' markets across the country might also have to do with a deeply ingrained collective social memory.

"We have been going to market as a society for thousands and thousands of years, for probably 10,000 years there's been markets and bartering of some sort," said Sturdy. "We're a social being and we eat to live - it's not optional so all of these things make it important and make it something that certainly should be a focus."