Loopholes in rules
have allowed
peddlers to
overrun markets,
farmers tell
judge
































Ag commissioners
called 'emotionally
incapable' of
cracking down
on abusers























One manager
contends new
rules won't stop
farmers who
want to cheat.





















Some proposed
regulations are
too stringent,
farmers testify

Click here for the latest news about the proposed regulation

February 1996
Divisions in Farmers Market Industry Aired at Hearing on New Regulations

Sales on 'Second Certificates' Debated

The regulations now in effect allow farmers market vendors to sell their own produce and produce from up to two other farms at any one time -- and for an unlimited number of other farms over the course of a year. The new regulation would permit a farmer to sell for only one other farmer per year -- and then only if the produce on that "carried certificate" is displayed separately and amounts to less than half the volume of produce from the vendor’s own farm. The proposal also would restrict leases entered into for the purpose of getting a producer certificate to sell in farmers markets.

A majority of those who testified spoke in support of the regulatory changes, which are supported by a number of major market associations in the state. The supporters of the tighter regulations said that abuses of carried certificates have allowed nonfarmers to infiltrate farmers markets. These "peddlers" who "buy and sell" produce instead of growing it put real farmers at a competitive disadvantage, hoodwink consumers and are responsible for a deterioration in the quality of produce on sale at farmers markets, proponents of the new regulation told Hoover.

Robert Munyon, a farmer from the Stockton area, testified that in the 1970s he was on the first advisory committee set up to help draft rules to govern newly created farmers markets. "We knew it would be only a matter of time before vendors started creeping in, and they have come creeping in," Munyon said. "As soon as second certificates came in, all hell broke loose with buying and selling on a statewide basis."

Art Lange, a fruit grower from Fresno County, also spoke in favor of the proposed changes. "The quality of [produce in] markets has been going well below the supermarket and once we get there, there won’t be any need for farmers markets any more," Lange said. "Buying and selling is one of the biggest reasons the quality is going down."

"The only way that the family farmer is going to make it is to control second certificates," added Alex Causey, another Fresno County grower who voiced strong support for tougher rules.

Even some of those who criticized the proposed changes agreed that there has been widespread abuse of well-intended loopholes in the direct marketing regulations. Those who testified differed on who deserves the blame.

Munyon said county agricultural commissioners are "financially incapable or emotionally incapable of enforcing the rules." They "don’t want to create bad PR" with the growers in their county, he said.

Others blamed see-no-evil market managers for letting the situation get out of hand. "I have heard time and again that growers brought a problem to the market manager and the market manager didn’t do anything about it," said Jack Gibson, manager of the farmers market in Cambria and one of the critics of creating new regulations when the old ones have not been enforced. He recommended taking the $10 assessment from each farmer that will fund enforcement of the new regulations and spending it on an education program for market managers. "We certify growers. Let’s certify market managers," Gibson said.

Out-of-season produce that was obviously not grown in California sometimes turns up in farmers markets without objection from anyone, several witnesses testified. To which Marion Kalb, executive director of Southland Farmers Market Association, sponsor of a couple dozen markets in the Southern California and a critic of the proposed regulations, replied, "If we can’t keep cherries out of farmers markets in October, how can we enforce" even more stringent regulations?

Betty Hamilton, manager of farmers markets in the Pasadena area, was one of several managers who spoke in defense of more lenient rules on use of carried certificates. She said 70 percent of the growers at one of the markets she manages, at Villa Park in Pasadena, sell produce on carried certificates. Hamilton also said nothing will stop farmers who want to cheat from getting around the new rules. "If someone wants to beat this program, they will," she said, adding that some farmers have already told her they plan to circumvent the new regulations. When asked, she declined to explain how they would do that.

Some of those who generally favored tighter regulations nonetheless criticized particular provisions of the proposed rules.

One proposed regulation, for example, states that produce on a carried certificate can be sold only by a producer or his or her immediate family members, not by employees who aren’t relatives. Dale Whitney, manager of markets in Long Beach, said that would preclude most second certificate sales at smaller markets, where farmers typically send employees rather than go themselves. "We need the variety offered by those second certificates at our smaller markets," Whitney said. He asserted that other proposed reforms would help weed out peddlers, making the ban on second certificate sales by employees overkill.

Gibson agreed, saying second certificates are vital to small and medium-sized markets such as the one he manages in Cambria. Fifteen of 58 growers who sell at his market have employees and those 15 account for 36 percent of gross sales, he said. "We stand to lose 20-25 percent of the market if employees are not allowed to sell produce on a second certificate," he concluded.

In addition, allowing farmers to carry only a single second certificate over the course of an entire year "totally disregards seasonal growers," and would mean that a grower who sells a neighbor’s cherries for a few weeks in the spring would be unable to sell for any other farmer for the more than 50 weeks remaining in the year.

Ron Schletewitz, a Fresno County farmer, said he generally supports the proposal but that some of the language on leases is "extremely limiting." The proposed regulation would require a farmer leasing land to enter into the deal before planting of annual crops or before bloom in tree crops, a proposal with which most agree. But beyond that, it would require the farmer to participate in "all phases of production."

Schletewitz noted that he doesn’t own a sprayer and so hires an outside contractor to do that work, a standard farming practice that apparently would be illegal under the new rules.

Another grower, Donna Sherrill, whose family raises fruit in Kern County, said a provision requiring farmers to keep records for three years is "way out of line." She and several others also criticized the process that led to the proposed regulations. They were drawn up with the help of the Integrity Task Force, a CDFA-appointed group that spent 18 months studying the direct marketing regulations and proposed changes. Sherrill said a statewide advisory board, appointed earlier this year in response to a law passed by the Legislature last year, should be given a chance to examine the proposal before it takes effect.

Molly Gean, a farmer from Ventura County, president of the Ventura Farmers Market Association and a spokesperson for the California Federation of Certified Farmers Markets, defended the work of the task force, on which she served.

The group started work long before the new advisory committee was envisioned in response to a widely perceived need that problems were getting out of hand. "Why are we here? In a word integrity," she said. If the industry had failed to address the problem, farmers markets would "simply be defrauding the public," Gean said.

The survival of markets doesn’t justify allowing violations to continue, she added. "All markets, large or small, must protect their integrity. We should truly be what we say we are," Gean concluded.