Nashville Farmers' Market bans re-sold products

Nashville Farmers' Market will soon allow only working farmers, artisans and craftspeople to set up shop in a nod toward greater authenticity.

Re-sold agriculture and other goods won't be permitted under changes the market's board unanimously approved at a special-called meeting on Wednesday. Flea market products that are commercially produced — compact discs, incense and mass-produced socks, for example — therefore won't be allowed either.

Retailers themselves must be the ones who grew the food or made the product. All merchants, including those who currently operate there, must reapply by the end of February if they want to continue working from the 20-year-old Metro-owned facility. Only those who match the new higher standards will be offered spots to return.

The impetus: embrace the market's true mission.

"We're not trying to get rid of people," said Margot McCormack, a Nashville restaurateur who chairs the market's board. "We're just trying to better the quality and the standards that we have. It's going to open us up to the local farmers who want to be at the market.

"Being that it's called the 'Nashville Farmers' Market,' we feel very wedded to the idea that farmers are really the premier piece of the puzzle."

The move marks the latest changes piloted by Tasha Kennard, hired as the market's director last year after the facility under previous leadership was the subject of a 2012 audit that found financial discrepancies in its operations.

Even before her arrival came an overhaul of the indoor market house, highlighted by the arrival of new establishments like Sloco, Bella Napoli, The Picnic Tap and soon Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams.

With the new changes on the retail and agriculture side, farmers must demonstrate, among other things, ownership or leaseholder rights to their land during the entire growing season, or they must show use rights of land owned by someone else. That should eliminate the re-selling of crops purchased wholesale.

Permitted merchandise that food artisans can sell include jams and jellies, cheese products and tea, coffee and cocoa. Acceptable craft goods include bath and body products, jewelry, quilts and beading and painting and sculpture. International street goods, rugs and musical instruments are some of the products allowed at the flea market.

Both farmers and producers will have to show where their products are from — city and state — on a sign where customers can see it.

"Across the country, there are really two different kinds of farmers' markets," Kennard said. "There are producer-only markets and there are markets where we call it, 'anything goes.' Our market has been an 'anything goes' market for a long time.

"This isn't anything that we're trying to do to put anybody out of business. It's more about what we're trying to do to take this market into the future for generations to come and also become self-sufficient."

A full list of acceptable items to sell will be made available to merchants who pick up applications. They can do so beginning Feb. 1. Responses would come in April, a timeline that coincides with the renovation of the facility's southeast shed to make it enclosed. It will house artisans making and selling products on-site.

On the farming side, higher product standards affect four companies that occupy a large swath of the facility's produce space. Though Metro plans to offer them space at the city-owned Tennessee State Fairgrounds, changes aren't sitting well with them.

"It's horrible," said Inglewood's Joshua "Bubba" Robertson, whose family-owned Robertson Produce imports most of its crops from southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee. The company has operated at the farmers' market since it opened. "This is our business. This is our livelihood. This is what we do for a living. We'll have to take other jobs and find other things to do."

Anne Hardy of Hardy's Produce, whose family's store sells a combination of homegrown and imported produce, doubted whether farmers would have the time to grow all their products: "How could they also be down here if they grew 100 percent?" she said from her spot at the market.

Others, though, support the change.

"People go to a farmers' market to get freshly harvested produce," said Cindy Delvins of Delvins Farms in Franklin. "I think it's just a great move to support true farmers in Tennessee and the area. It can only lead to a much better connection to the community."

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.