Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
permarkets around the country. This is not unusual. According to one survey, more than
70 percent of growers who sell at farmers' markets also sell though traditional channels.
Now, although the markets are at the core of the Weisers' business, sales outside the
markets make up the bulk of the farm's income. Dan Weiser, Alex's brother and the busi-
ness brain in the family, estimates that sales to restaurants and wholesalers now account
for 60 to 65 percent of the farm's business. And, he says, he'd like to take that number to
90 percent, an idea that makes Alex noticeably uncomfortable.
Although Alex acknowledges the need to expand the business, he insists that farmers'
markets and sales to the public should always be at the center of the operation. "The mar-
ket gives us the confidence we need to grow stuff," he says. "It confirms our ideas about
what people are looking for. Also, knowing that I can always sell stuff here gives me lever-
age I wouldn't have otherwise when dealing with produce companies. If they can't give me
a decent price, I know I can move it myself rather than just taking what they want to give
me. I know I'm not going to lose my shirt on something; I've always got my costs covered.
Farmers' markets give us a little control over our fates."
Furthermore, the markets act as magnets for other business. Specialty produce com-
panies regularly troll farmers' markets looking for new items and suppliers. "It's kind of
a showroom for new products," Alex says. Executives from big specialty produce whole-
salers often come by the stand, whip out digital cameras and snap pictures of the veget-
ables on display. Dan, who joined the family business a couple of years ago after working
in entertainment marketing, says, "The word we used for it at Disney was `synergy.' We
couldn't do restaurants or wholesale without the farmers' markets. And if we were doing
just farmers' markets, we wouldn't be able to make enough money to keep going."
Of course, not every farmers' market grower is fronting a million-dollar business. Many
are just scraping along. But sometimes even that is a marked improvement for the farmers
in question, and some of them have had a significant effect on the produce industry. There
is no better example of that than the more than seven hundred Asian American farmers,
predominantly Laotian, who live in Fresno County, California. More than half of the cer-
tified farmers' market growers in the area - the richest fruit and vegetable farmland in
the country - are of Asian descent. Although their economic impact is hard to quantify,
the statistical category "Asian Vegetables" accounts for more than $10 million in sales in
Fresno County alone, a figure that is growing every year.
Many of the Laotian farmers came to the United States after the Vietnam War. Some
had fought in the United States "secret war" in Southeast Asia and suffered years of hard-
