Crescent City Farmer's Market
(Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice
Ted Quant, Director, 504-861-5830)
Richard McCarthy, ECOnomics Project Director
Larry Bonds, Microenterprise Development Coordinator
Loyola University, Box 907
7214 St. Charles Ave.
New Orleans, La. 70118
(504) 861-5898

In the autumn of 1995, concerned because they felt that the famous New Orleans French Market had evolved into a “tourist trap,” full of sunglasses and T-shirt vendors with little room for small-farm operators and organic-food growers, staffers of the Twomey Center established its new ECOnomics project, a new city green market that would open new business opportunities for farmers in the region.

Using donated space -- a parking lot and a garage -- in the city’s Warehouse District near the French Quarter (700 Magazine Street at the corner of Girod), they invited vendors to set up shop for a weekly market on Saturday mornings, with produce and some prepared food products available 52 weeks a year in Southern Louisiana’s benign climate. Vendors pay only a nominal $10 per week for space and may keep all other proceeds. There’s some screening of participants, though, as vendors must apply in writing, be reviewed by staff, and meet several criteria including locally grown produce or ingredients, “a linkage to the New Orleans area cultural heritage,” and be able to provide sufficient quantity of product to meet the demand. Prepared foods must also pass a taste test.

Opened as only a three-month demonstration project in November of 1995, the market proved such a success that it was quickly turned into a permanent fixture; it now hosts a total of 30 vendors, ranging from growers of squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, eggplant, and just about every other imaginable form of produce to baked goods, canned preserves and sauces, flowers, and a producer of commercial strawberry wine. It’s been successful every step of the way, Bonds said, with only one irritating challenge: The proprietors of New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket demanded that the New Orleans project give up its original name, New Orleans Green Market; the new name, Crescent City Farmers Market, was chosen by vote from several alternatives suggested by shoppers. A little puzzled by the New York group’s proprietary zeal, organizers here joke, “now the Union Square Greenmarket can recover from the hardship that it suffered when confused Manhattan shoppers began booking chartered flights to New Orleans for makin’ groceries.”)

Every Saturday morning, crowds start forming promptly at 8, and the busy urban corner lot is jammed with shoppers by 10 a.m., when a different local chef appears every week to give a cooking lesson focused on products available at the market. (Currently, honoring the Faberge exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art, egg recipes are the featured item.)

As of early 1997, the market’s primary clientele is middle-class, but the Twomey Center has a number of plans to increase its impact on the city’s low- and middle-income community.

First, Larry Bonds is working with a group of residents of the St. Thomas public-housing project to set up a micro-enterprise business -- most likely producing fresh pasta -- that will employ at least three to five residents making value-added products for sale in the market. Organizers hope that having project residents participating in the market as vendors will inspire more folks from the projects to turn out on Saturdays and shop. Meanwhile, Sr. Jane Remson has been trying to work with state officials to facilitate use of WIC coupons in the farmers’ market, although to this point, they haven’t warmed up to the concept of trying something new.

“We’ve learned a lot in one year,” Project Director Richard McCarthy wrote in the market newsletter last fall. “City folks have learned something about food and where it comes from. Rural folks have discovered that, contrary to television broadcasts, urban dwellers can be kind and generous. As one farmer put it, ‘the market has helped restore some of my faith in New Orleans.’ New Orleans is a beautiful city with wonderful people. It is our hope that the market may begin to unleash the creative power of people working together.”

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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