EL DORADO — What started as a discussion about restrictions for street vendors has led to talks on El Dorado building and operating a citywide marketplace for farmers and other vendors.
A local businessman approached the El Dorado City Council to complain that several street vendors, who come in for the weekends sometimes from as far away as Houston to peddle their wares in parking lots and on street corners in the city, were not following the city licensing rules and procedures and were taking customers away from the full-time business owners.
A conversation began about restricting those vendors to a certain area of the city, but eventually the discussion turned to whether the city could support a full time farmers market that would allow vendors.
“What’s happening with us is the council had wanted to develop a zone for vendors - a particular part of the city along certain streets where all vendors including farmers would sell their wares,” said Mayor Mike Dumas. “The council directed me to get together a group of growers and have them research where a central market might be located and work out some other issues like size and rules.”
The proposal for a farmers market space has been discussed several times by the El Dorado City Council over the past half-decade, with mixed opinions from officials who are hesitant to commit city funds for the endeavor andfrom some farmers who say a common market allows for price undercutting and other problems.
The city has commissioned several studies over the years that say the city’s population could support a market, but no action has been taken until now to move the proposal forward.
Dumas appointed a three-member farmer board to gather area farmers and come up with stipulations if the market were to move forward, including possible locations, how the market would be managed and the basic necessities for farmers.
“From those that appeared before the council the other night, they’re not opposed to a farmers market, but there needs to be some regulations and rules that everyone has to follow,” Dumas said.
Rhonda Rudder sets up shop every Friday at the corner of Fifth and College avenues in El Dorado with three folding tables and bushels of sweet potatoes, greens, squash and other fall and winter crops. Rudder is one of three farmers tapped by the mayor to talk to other farmers who sell their wares at different locations all over town.
Rudder said she’s seen both sides of the argument, having sold both with others and by herself at her current location.
“I had a friend who was selling out here with me,” she said. “I do recognize that some days he gets the sale I might have gotten, but to me there’s a bigger impact of creating a community of growers.”
Some farmers feel the move would cut into their business because other sellers could undercut prices or because customers who know where to find them now might not come if they have to go farther to buy the produce. Others raised concerns about vendors who buy their produce at cost and then bring it to the streets to sell, saying the produce often isn’t local and would be harder to compete with.
“There’s a worry that some people won’t be as group minded and they may try to undercut each other,” Rudder said. “There aren’t that many growers who sell at farm stands here, so we questioned whether there was enough of us to justify the headache, additional responsibility and expense to the city.
“I think we’re testing the waters right now, and there are going to have to be a lot more conversations before anything happens.”
Kerry Durheim moved to the El Dorado area from Little Rock where she attended the River Market Farmers Market weekly. Her children clamored for her to buy fruit to eat while they waited for her to finish her conversation.
“We definitely miss the market. We wait for [Rudder] because I know she grows her food organically and those are the kinds of things I’m interested in. It’s hard to find organic produce even in the store here,” she said.
If the market moves forward, the plan would be for the city to buy the property and set up refrigeration and other needed facilities for the farmers and vendors. They would also likely add a market manager’s position to the city’s payroll if the farmers decided it was the best way to move forward, Dumas said.
Jody Hardin, who manages the Argenta Market in North Little Rock, also co-founded the Certified Arkansas Farmers’ Market network and is executive director of the Arkansas Farmers Market Association. He has helped several markets write bylaws that protect local farmers from many of the complaints and worries circulating in the El Dorado farming community.
“There’s a whole movement to back up what El Dorado is doing in the state. It’s the trend to pull the market together in one place and build infrastructure in one place,” Hardin said, adding that “the money that farmers spend in the local market has a higher money multiplier effect on the economy because all their money stays local .... Local food is an economic engine and the city really needs to look at it that way.”
There are almost 80 markets registered with the farmers market association, but Hardin said not all markets survive if work isn’t put into planning them ahead of time. He cited at least one farmers market that recently folded because the local vendors pulled out after a produce peddler that didn’t grow its produce started coming to the market and undercutting prices.
“You have to put a lot of work into setting up and planning a market to address these issues before vendors start selling,” he said. “They have an opportunity to build a food and agricultural community around this market.”
Hardin said he is involved in a campaign at the Arkansas Legislature to define what can be called a farmers market and what can be labeled as local produce to further help local growers develop a local food niche in their communities.
Dumas said he hopes the committee will be able to report back soon and, if a market is started, that it can be functional by the beginning of the spring harvest season.
For business owner Tony Vartinian, the market doesn’t solve the original complain the filed about vendors.
Some businesses inside the proposed vending districts complained that the perimeters unfairly targeted their businesses for the competition. Vartinian said he doesn’t believe the vendors would have followed the location restrictions and he doesn’t believe they’ll relocate to the centralized market.
“It’s not going to help anything. The vendors, maybe they’ll set up there once or twice, then they’ll go back to the parking lots they always set up in,” he said. “If the police come and send them away, they’ll just move. There needs to be more code enforcement focused on them.”
Dumas said the city has had difficulties checking for licenses because the vendors often set up on the weekends when the code enforcement officers are off-duty. Farmers are exempt from buying those permits under state law. The responsibility of checking for the proper licenses then falls to the Police Department. Capt. David Smith with the El Dorado Police Department said his officers check out permits when they get complaints or requests from the city. He said most vendors that they shut down for license violations don’t cause problems.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/22/2010