Main Street Journal: On the River: A Tale of Two Markets

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The following article is taken from the October 2009 issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

On the River: A Tale of Two Markets
By: Michael Roy Hollihan

Memphis has always been a commercial city in the heart of an abundant agricultural region. And yet, getting fresh, locally grown produce has been a hit or miss affair. Grocery store produce has tended to rule the day – herbicidally-nurtured food grown elsewhere in the country, picked early and pumped full of ripening chemicals in the hopes that it will attain “ripeness” upon arrival at your neighborhood big-box, chain grocery store.

It used to be that Ripley Tomatoes were the only things you could easily find if you wanted to step beyond industrial food.

Not any more.

The Farmers Market at the Agricenter in Cordova was your only bet for locally grown, naturally raised produce, unless you wanted to travel far outside the metro area. Its appearance reflects its historical roots – a large barn with plain wooden tables and stalls, an almost farm-like atmosphere. It’s the rural tradition carried without adornment into the 21st century. Even its website is plain and basic.

The Agricenter Farmers Market is now a seven day a week market, with more than three dozen vendors on the traditional market day of Saturday. But even Monday through Friday, there are many fruit and vegetable vendors, plant and flower sellers. Its location is easily reachable for anyone in the eastern part of the county or in North Mississippi; not so much for the vast urban pool of Memphis.

Then came the “Whole Foods/Wild Oats” phenomenon. It proved there was a large, untapped market waiting for the option of urban grocery shopping for a different kind of product. Food had to have naturalness and freshness, but it also had to have been grown with environmental and social justice and its presentation had to be more than utilitarian. And it had to be in their neighborhood.

While stores have come and gone, Whole Foods does steady, thriving business. Maybe they don’t quite share the rural aesthetic, but urban Memphians clearly want fresh, natural foods.

With the rise of the Downtown housing market and the coalescence of the Midtown “vibe,” a new demographic arose that demanded more than business-as-usual produce from chain stores. Enter the Memphis Farmers Market, next door to the Central Station downtown. The standing joke is, if you don’t get there by 10 or 11 AM, then you’re likely to miss out on what you’re looking for.

But where the Agricenter tends toward a rural and utilitarian feel, the Downtown Market is very self-aware, decorative and community-minded. It’s not uncommon to hear live music. Stalls don’t have plain signs, but fanciful and decorated signs. Vendors can answer your questions about the provenance of their wares, how it was grown and with what regimen (if any) of herbicides, etc. People come not only to buy, but to see and be seen, to socialize. It has more of a bazaar feel than an agricultural market feel.

Causes are promoted. Tour the MFM’s website. They have quite an extensive website and there are all sorts of appeals to community-building, healthy eating and living, nutrition, education, activism and much more. To borrow a phrase, this is not your father’s farmers market.

It’s not that the Downtown Farmers Market is somehow supplanting the Agricenter. Rather, there’s more than enough room and demand in Memphis for both. And for more besides. Millington is even now constructing a new farmers market and the towns across North Mississippi, like Hernando, are getting back into the game.

With the success of the area’s two major farmers markets even (maybe especially) during a recession, we can be hopeful and hungry for what’s to come.

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