A Tale of Two Markets: Part II, Newton County, Arkansas



 In my prior post about the farmers markets in Telluride and Mountain Village, Colorado, I promised to compare and contrast those markets with the one in Jasper, Arkansas, my home town.  Both places are similar in some ways, dramatically different in others.  First, both are rural/nonmetropolitan by most ecological measures, e.g., population density and size.  Indeed, both have similar total populations-- San Miguel County just over 7000, and Newton County just over 8000.  Both are also mountain towns (San Juans of the Rockies on one hand, Ozarks on the other), which benefit from ecotourism.  In fact, both are amenity rich in terms of outdoor activities, but Telluride has many more "built" amenities, and is quite cosmopolitan culturally.  This distinction and the crowd each county attracts is reflected in the annual accommodation and food service sales for 2007:  $77 million in San Miguel County, $3.2 million in Newton County.  That and the relative affluence are also reflected in retail sales per capita in 2007:  $13,114 in San Miguel County, $1,596 in Newton County.

The Newton County market is held on the courthouse square.

Tensions between old timers and newcomers are evident in both places.  In Telluride, those tensions often play out in planning battles, but presumably also in other ways.  Newton County does not engage in any planning or regulate building in any way, so these tensions are manifest in other ways.  In fact, my sense is that these conflicts have seemingly dissipated over the years, perhaps because long-time residents have come to see newcomers as a net gain to the community.

Beyond these similarities, the differences between the two places are more apparent.  Telluride is an extraordinary example of rural gentrification and is so obviously affluent, Newton County is a persistent poverty county, which means it is characterized by entrenched, inter-generational poverty.  I provided some socioeconomic data about Telluride and San Miguel County in my last post.  Here's some about Newton County:  Its poverty rate is 22.5%, and it's median household income is $27,441.  Whereas nearly half of San Miguel County residents have a bachelor's degree or greater, only 12.2% of Newton County residents do.  Newton County is a Federal/State Government dependent economy, while San Miguel County has a Service-dependent economy.

How is this very different demographic profile reflected in the two places' farmers markets?  I already provided lots of information about the Telluride and Mountain Village markets, and at least the former is fairly long standing.  The Newton County farmers' market, in contrast, started only this year, with a push from the Newton County Agricultural Extension Office.  (I don't even recall much of a tradition of farm stands in Newton County--just neighbors sharing the fruits of their gardens with others).  Whereas the San Miguel County markets take place weekly, spring through fall, the Newton County market takes place only on one Friday evening a month, from 4 pm to 6 pm (aiming to catch people passing the courthouse square on their way home from work), with the last market of the season likely to be this week (though in future years it might be in August, absent present doubt conditions).  I don't know the cost of participating in the Telluride market, but participation in the Newton County market costs just $5/week, and the Extension Office is considering the option of an annual fee.  I'm not sure what participants get for that -- presumably the benefit of a sign announcing the market, which I saw in a newspaper story about it.


While vendors at the Colorado markets were numerous, only five vendors showed up to participate in the Newton County market on the Friday in early July when my mom showed up to take these photos as my proxy.  She found four fruit and veg vendors and one craftsman.  One of the food vendors had not only fresh produce, but also home-baked goods and jams and relishes for $5 each.  That's less than half the $11/jar cost at Mountain Village.  Tomatoes were $6/lb in Colorado, but only $2.25 in Newton County (and my mom declared them the best she's ever eaten).  The selection wasn't extensive -- certainly none of the kohlrabi featured at the Mountain Village market--but it included some potatoes, peppers, and squash in addition to the items noted above.  I suspect most vendors simply brought excess bounty from their own gardens, and that they did not decide what to plant because of the existence of the market.  I don't believe any of the vendors are engaged in agritourism, but I suspect those selling jams and relishes don't also market those at the nearby gift shops on Scenic Highway 7 (see the figures below).  No one at this market is making a living off the market, which is quite different to what I learned about the Colorado markets.

All of the vendors at the Newton County market were from within the county, population 8,264.  I suppose it is not a sufficiently attractive market in terms of income potential to draw vendors from a wider area.  And I suspect most if not all vendors brought excess bounty from their own gardens, that they had not decided what to plant because of the existence of the market.  I don't believe any of the vendors are engaged in agritourism, but I'd be surprised if those selling jams and relishes don't also market those at the nearby gift shops on Scenic Highway 7.  Unlike in Telluride, none of the vendors had signs or brochures indicating their names or that of their farm; certainly, these Newton County farmers had not invested as much as the Telluride vendors in display aesthetics.

I recently came across U.S. Government data on some of the very questions I was addressing.  Here's the county-to-county comparison on a range of agricultural data points, from the Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America:

• Principal Operator 10 years or more on same parcel:  San Miguel County, 87; Newton County,  439
• Principal Operator 2 years or less on same parcel:  San Miguel County, 1; Newton County, 35. 
• Number of farms:  San Miguel County, 123; Newton County, 636.
• Percentage of land being farmed:  San Miguel County, 18.3%; Newton County, 21.5%.
• Average market value of product sold:  San Miguel County, $27,235; Newton County $29,907.
• Percentage of farms with sales below $10K in 2007:  San Miguel County, 71%; Newton County,  68%.     
• Average government payment 2007:  San Miguel County, $9230; Newton County, $1756.
•  Percentage of farms with income from agritourism:    San Miguel County, 4.87%; Newton County, 0.47%.  
• Percentage of farms engaged in value-added production: San Miguel County, 8.9%; Newton County, 5.3%.
• Percentage of farms using CSA:  San Miguel County, 1.62%; Newton County, 0.
• Percentage of farms with high speed internet:  San Miguel County, 48%; Newton County, 24%.
• Percentage of operators working off farm:  San Miguel County, 38%; Newton County, 46%. 
• Percentage of farms with woman operator:  San Miguel County, 18%; Newton County, 14%. 

I acknowledge that this county-to-county comparison is a bit misleading about the markets because, as acknowledged in my earlier post, food at the Telluride area markets actually comes from many neighboring counties, not only from San Miguel County.  Nevertheless, I find it an interesting comparison. 

Note the small market, and the wooden chairs for sale by one vendor. 

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism. 

The Feminization of Farming

That is the title of Professor Olivier De Schutter's op-ed in the New York Times today, but it reminds me of another catchy (if depressing) phrase feminists coined a few decades ago:  the feminization of poverty.

As it turns out, De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the the right to food, brings together issues of gender equality and food security in his op-ed in a way that shows the link of both to, you guessed it, poverty.  As most of us know, women are more likely than men to be living in poverty, wherever they are in the world.  Turns out, according to De Shutter, as women get more and more responsibility for growing food in the developing world--partly as a result of male migration for work--women's poverty and hunger, along with that of their families, is exacerbated, not eliminated.

Specifically, De Schutter discusses a report released today to the United Nations Human Rights Council in which he calls for a "comprehensive, rights-based approach focused on removing legal discrimination and on improving public services — child care, water supplies, sanitation and energy sources — to reduce the burden on women who farm."

Noting women's increasing roles "on the front lines of the fight to sustain family farms," De Schutter asserts that gender discrimination and stereotyping lead to pervasive discrimination against women, hindering their ability to overcome poverty and hunger.  Some manifestations of this discrimination "den[y] small-scale female farmers the same access men have to fertilizer, seeds, credit membership in cooperatives and unions, and technical assistance."  Just as problematic, if not more so according to De Schutter, are the burdens associated with traditional gender roles that leave women expected to do "unremunerated household chores like cooking, cleaning, fetching water, collecting firewood and caring for the very young and the elderly." De Schutter notes that these activities are equivalent "to as much as 63 percent of gross domestic product in India and Tanzania," and that these endless tasks keep women from having the time they need to "attend classes, travel to markets to sell produce or do other activities to improve their economic prospects."

De Schutter provides success stories from Bangladesh, the Philippines and China, mostly about programs that look at first blush unrelated to farming and food.  These programs have, among other things, provided obstetric and other health services, educated women about domestic violence, enhanced education for children, supplied clean water and latrines, and employed women on rural road maintenance crews.  Yet as apparently unrelated to farming as these programs are, all of these have had the knock on effect of enhancing women's farm productivity and helping to alleviate hunger.

De Schutter does not mention the role that CEDAW--which includes specific rights for rural women--can play in all of this, but that is a topic I have written about extensively here, here, and here.  This article is about empowerment of India's rural populations in particular.

Kudos to De Schutter--and the United Nations--for seeing food security as part of a much wider web that implicates women's agency and well-being.  

Cross posted to Legal Ruralism.

Rurality as a Dimension of Environmental Justice: Call for Papers

2014 Rural Sociological Society Annual Conference: “Equity, Democracy, and the Commons: Counter-Narratives for Rural Transformation.”

Location: New Orleans, Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria Hotel

Date: July 30th to August 3, 2014

Paper Abstracts due: March 3

Submission: Email abstracts (up to 350-words) to Loka Ashwood (ashwood@wisc.edu) and Kate Mactavish (kate.mactavish@oregonstate.edu) in lieu of an online submission.

Changing community and production dynamics in rural America make it a state-sanctioned site for some of the most hazardous and toxic industries of our time.  From its production treadmill, industrial agriculture has cast onto rural America a plethora of negative externalities:  mounting levels of air and water pollution, farm consolidation, and depopulation.   A range of extraction and other risky industries justify the siting of facilities in rural areas because of easy access to ample natural resources, sparse populations that reduce exposure risk, and the possibility of economic revitalization.  State and federal statutes (e.g., right-to-farm laws, the Federal Code of Regulations for Nuclear Operations) often permit these industries to target rural America based on past practice and low population levels.  

On an international level, cities serve as powerful hubs for the global economy, pulling resources away from less prominent urban and rural areas. The growing periphery within core countries, as well as continued resource extraction of rural places abroad, calls for increased attention to the rural facets of injustice in developed and developing countries.

We invite paper submissions that explore facets of rurality that help explain rural places’ vulnerability to environmental injustices from interdisciplinary perspectives, including (but not limited to) sociology, geography, law, anthropology, public health, and the environmental sciences. We are especially keen to receive papers from scholars working broadly on issues of environmental justice in order to foster conversation between those scholars and scholars whose focus is on rurality more generally.

Select papers from the proceedings and a wider call will be reviewed for potential publication in a special issue being considered by the Journal of Rural Studies.

Confirmed Panelist: Steve Wing, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.