Published August 2003

Growing
direct markets

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT Brian and Connie Foster sell their produce along with jams, espresso and antiques at their Arlington roadside market.

Small farms turn to retail trade
of their crops to survive, thrive

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

Across Snohomish County, local farmers are going after the retail dollar.

Farmers such as Darren Wright of Gypsy Rows Co. in Silvana, who makes a weekly circuit of farmers’ markets in Edmonds, Snohomish and Everett to sell his lettuce, beets, sweet corn and summer squash.

Or Tristan Klesick of The Organic Produce Shoppe, who weekly delivers fresh produce grown on his farm — and the farms of other local growers — to customers’ doorsteps (see related article).

Or Brian and Connie Foster, who have turned an Arlington dairy farm into a roadside must-see, selling their produce along with antiques, ice cream and espresso, and offering a corn maze and petting zoo (see related article).

Snohomish County Business Journal/ KIMBERLY HILDEN Farmer Darren Wright of Silvana prepares his produce for sale at the farmers’ market in downtown Everett, one of four he attends weekly during the market season.

It’s what many small farms are doing today, trying to find ways to keep the land productive, generate revenue to keep paying their bills and avoid “being a victim of that wholesale market,” said Keith Stocker of Stocker Farms (www.stockerfarms.com) in Snohomish.

“Trying to sell at wholesale anymore, it doesn’t bring back enough return to keep the farm in operation,” said Stocker, whose family farm, which employs 36 people, has transitioned over the years from wholesale to almost entirely retail.

Today, the former dairy farm grows a wide variety of vegetable crops without the use of chemicals and sells those crops at its own produce market just off Highway 9. Visitors can pick their own flowers, visit barnyard animals and, in the fall, pick a pumpkin and play in a corn maze. New this year: Christmas trees.

“We’re not only selling a product but also the experience,” said Stocker, who with other Snohomish pumpkin farmers and business leaders developed the Snohomish Festival of Pumpkins, a monthlong event that made its debut last October.

And though Stocker’s 200-acre farm has scaled back production — actively working about 80 of those acres — to meet just the needs of its own market, it has reaped the reward of direct marketing: full retail value.

“Those using direct markets are getting a better price for their product,” said Vance Corum, a Washington State University direct marketing specialist and coordinator for the research project Northwest Direct: Improving Markets for Small Farms.

“The goal is really to get the word out on a lot of different avenues that are available and make people realize that if you want to do the work, with direct marketing, you become the price makers rather than the price takers,” said Corum.

Funded through a $1.28 million federal grant, Northwest Direct — a project involving WSU, Oregon State University, the University of Idaho, the nonprofit Rural Roots organization and Washington state’s Department of Agriculture — is in its second year of research, with work being done in four key areas:

• Input/output of agricultural product, or looking at what percentage of food consumed locally is produced locally.
• Farms already involved with direct marketing — from running a roadside stand to participating in farmers’ markets or some form of community supported agriculture — with case studies being performed on 13 such farms within the three Northwest states.
• Farmers’ markets, with outside teams conducting rapid-market assessments at 17 farmers’ markets as well as a survey of market managers within the three states.
• Infrastructure and regulatory barriers to direct marketing, with an initial focus on the poultry industry.

Already, the project’s initial work has discovered that less than 2 percent of all fresh fruit and vegetables consumed in King County is produced in that county, Corum said, which points to tremendous capacity for further production if it can be done in a sustainable way.

Similar studies will be performed at the state level of all three participating states, as well as at the county level for Lane County in Oregon and Bonner County in Idaho.

“From the analysis, we hope to be able to give direction to what changes may be more feasible in the near future for farmers and policy makers to increase production at a local level,” he said, noting that the project currently runs through 2004.

For the farmers’ market research, Northwest Direct has already performed rapid-market assessments — with customer counts, customer feedback and observations from a team of market managers and board members as well as agriculture professionals — at farmers’ markets in Seattle’s University District, Port Angeles and Yakima.

Market layout, parking, atmosphere, vendor mix, products and quality were among the factors assessed, Corum said, with each participating market receiving a final report as a resource.

“The real goal is not just to do the study in a given community, but to have members who are active in other markets learn techniques, go back to their own home community and carry out most of this research at the local level,” he added.

While there is “money to be made” in direct marketing, Corum notes that it’s not a route that all small farmers will want to take.

“We don’t delude ourselves that all will want to direct market their goods,” he said.

For one, it takes effort to devise a marketing strategy, not to mention time and money to put that strategy to work — whether it’s in hiring a sales staff to man a roadside stand or taking the time away from the farm to work a farmers’ market booth.

Plus, it helps if you’re a people person, said Neil Landaas, manager of farmers’ markets in Snohomish, Edmonds and — new this year — downtown Everett. Because at farmers’ markets, “the whole thing is ‘meet the producer.’”

“Consumers that come here greatly appreciate being able to buy directly from the producer,” he said during a recent farmers’ market in downtown Everett. “I think it’s an education factor — they actually can talk to a grower, ask them ‘How does a raspberry grow?’ ... People want information, and I don’t think they get that information in grocery stores or supermarkets.”

Landaas noted that direct marketing through farmers’ markets is growing, with sales at the Edmonds and Snohomish farmers’ markets up 20 percent in 2002 over the prior year; sales in 2001 were up 17 percent from 2000.

“There’s a lot of new farmers coming on board for direct sales; it’s a much more profitable way for them to operate,” he added. “But it takes consumers, too. Just because there are a lot of farmers that want to do it, I don’t necessarily know at this point if the market can absorb them. We’re still dealing with competition from supermarkets and grocery stores.

“But, hopefully, in the next few years, that will change,” Landaas said.

For more information on Northwest Direct, contact Corum at 360-576-6030 or by e-mail to corum@wsu.edu.

Related: Family venture nurtures local growers
Related: Dairy "getting by" despite poor market
Related: Fosters growing a roadside attraction

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