Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9310290064
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Gutherie's family has been selling on the market for 40 years.
Over time, the friendly, bright-eyed Franklin County farm wife has watched the buying habits of her customers change, reflecting broader changes taking place in American society.
Years back, Gutherie normally sold apples or string beans by the bushel. Now, her customers pick up the Red Delicious one or two at a time. "It's common to sell a half-pound of beans," Gutherie said.
People aren't teaching their children simple things anymore, like how you cook peas, added Gutherie's daughter, Caroline, who has been selling beside her mother for 22 years. It's a matter of changing priorities, she said.
But if people are eating out more and cooking less at home, it's not showing up on the market's bottom line.
In 1992, the farmers who operate retail stalls on the Roanoke City Market generated nearly $1 million in sales, according to state sales tax reports.
And that was a 285 percent increase in sales from the year before, said Franklin Kimbrough, executive director of Downtown Roanoke Inc., which manages the market.
Across Virginia, farmers sell nearly $2.2 billion worth of goods a year. And much of that business goes through dozens of farm markets across the state.
Beef cattle, the state's top livestock commodity, last year accounted for roughly $350 million, or 17 percent of all farm income. It might be sold through livestock markets, like the one at Hollins with its outside pens and indoor show ring.
Tobacco, the state's top cash crop, brings in $525 million, or one-quarter of Virginia farm income. Farmers take their harvest to cavernous warehouses in Danville or Abingdon, where the flue-cured and burley crops are sold to cigarette makers at tongue-twisting auctions.
Fruit and vegetables account for roughly $144 million a year in Virginia farm production. Some of that goes through farmers markets like the ones in downtown Roanoke, Salem, Vinton, Blacksburg and 31 other communities.
Newer to the state system are three wholesale markets, where growers can take their harvests to sell to commercial food brokers. One of those is the 1 1/2-year-old state market beside Interstate 77 near Hillsville in Carroll County.
Sales at the produce markets are only a small share of the state's total fruit and vegetable production, but their economic impact goes beyond the immediate income from sales.
In Roanoke, for instance, the market is often counted as the heart of a reborn downtown. And in Hillsville, the new wholesale market is changing what farmers grow.
Carl and Paula Crowder of Reidsville, N.C., were on their way home from visiting family in West Virginia two weeks ago when they stopped at the Southwest Virginia Farmers Market near Hillsville.
"We always stop to get cabbage, apples and honey when we pass through," Crowder said as he loaded up at a retail stall operated by Carroll County farmer Donald Brady.
The market is one of three set up by the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
In the mid-1980s, recognizing that Virginia farmers were missing an opportunity already seized by other states, the state legislature launched a statewide farmers market system.
The oldest state market is in Halifax County. Another opened last month at Melfa on the Eastern Shore. Two more markets are planned for central and southeastern Virginia.
The Hillsville market has a retail shed from which farmers can sell their goods to passing motorists and local residents.
But it's primarily a wholesale market with a big grading, packing and shipping building as its centerpiece.
By providing farmers a place to sell their produce and by bringing the production of several farmers together in one place, the market attracts produce buyers for supermarkets, institutions, mom-and-pop stores and wholesalers, who in the past would have done their shopping at markets in the Carolinas.
The Southwest Virginia market already has had a major impact on the farmers it was built to serve.
Carroll County is one of the top cabbage-producing counties in the United States, but most of its harvest is sold directly from the field and loaded into tractor-trailers. From early June until Nov. 1, approximately 20 tractor-trailer loads of cabbage a day - roughly 400 tons - are hauled out of Carroll County.
Brady, one of the county's big cabbage farmers, said he expects local farmers to diversify into crops they can sell through the market. Brady plans to cut back on the acres of cabbage he plants next year to plant vegetables that can be sold through the market instead.
Kevin Semones, manager of the Hillsville market, agrees that diversification of Carroll County's farming may be one of the consequences of the new market.
Semones said he was surprised to see some "hard-line" cabbage growers planting tomatoes and peppers this year. But both crops, which the market graded and packed, brought good money.
Besides promoting diversification, the market provides other indirect economic benefits to farmers, said Charles Coale, a Virginia Tech extension specialist in farm marketing.
When farmers grow non-traditional crops during a time of year when they're normally not as busy, they make better use of their hired hands, Coale said. Those laborers often are foreign workers who the farmers must house in addition to paying government-regulated wages.
The market also encourages people to get into farming by assuring them buyers for their produce as well as other forms of support, he said.
"All in all, the market is doing as good or maybe better than people expected it to be," Semones said. Sales in the wholesale portion of the market were an estimated $3.5 million through June.
"I think we're a good two years ahead of our expectations," said Danny Neel of Wytheville, regional market development manager with the state Agriculture Department. "As far as the reception of buyers from surrounding states, we've been well pleased."
Not all of the market's sales are locally grown produce. The produce brokers who rent space deal in a wide range of fruits and vegetables from a variety of sources.
Billy Horton, manager of Mountain Bananas - one of six wholesale produce brokers to move into the market building since last fall, said his Carroll County company has seen good, steady growth at the market. Horton said he has bought peppers, tomatoes and sweet corn from local farmers.
Trent Cromer, an owner of Cana Produce, said he moved his business from the North Carolina border community of Cana to the market in March, retaining his old customers and picking up new ones.
Cromer, who ships produce to the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Ohio, said he now has an easier place to load and unload trucks. The market is better for his customers because they have a bigger selection of produce, he said.
The rent on Cromer's two bays in the market building is $1,000 a month. In addition, he has invested $90,000 to outfit the stalls with cold-storage equipment.
Cromer buys locally grown tomatoes, apples, peaches, cucumbers, squash and other produce. He's been buying from the same local farmers for years, he said. "We try to be as good to farmers as we can," said his wife, Connie Cromer. "Without farmers, we wouldn't have anything."
While brokers praise the wholesale facilities at the market, they say the retail sales area needs work.
The metal retail shed has a high roof and no sides to protect farmers or their customers from blowing rain. The gravel floor is hard to keep clean. The only restrooms are in the wholesale building.
County Administrator William Mitchell said the county has been moving as quickly as possible to build a second retail shed that will provide more protection from the elements.
Besides the new retail shed, the $210,000 grant will be used to buy equipment for the wholesale operation, including a forklift and truck scales.
The new retail building, which will cost roughly $65,000, will have enclosed ends and partially enclosed sides and provide more protection from the elements, Mitchell said. The retail market was not intended to be a year-round operation, he said.
"Carroll County and Southwest Virginia farmers don't grow anything in the winter."
Now, try to imagine downtown Roanoke without its historic farmers market.
People who operate businesses in the market area can't dream of it either. The market is a magnet that draws many of the people who patronize their shops and restaurants.
Some shop owners don't hesitate to say they probably wouldn't be in business downtown if the farmers market weren't close by.
Without the farmers, the market area probably would resemble other parts of downtown Roanoke where retail shops have been disappearing, said Kent Agnew. His business, Agnew Seed, has been operating in the same location on the market since 1907.
Without the market, "We wouldn't be here, because we started out there," Gary Crowder of Wertz's Country Store said, pointing to a stall in front of the store. Crowder's partner, Ezera Wertz, has operated the stall for about 40 years. Wertz has a farm in the Cave Spring area of Roanoke County.
And at Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea, a shop that draws crowds week-long, the business is best on Saturday's, when most people are downtown to visit the farmers market, manager Janet Carty said.
The market, the offices of the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau and the museums and shops of Center in the Square combine to make a "powerful draw," Downtown Roanoke's Kimbrough said.
In order to rent a stall on the Roanoke market, vendors must raise their own produce. Freshness and quality are the two big selling points, Kimbrough said. The stalls rent for $25 a month.
The Roanoke market has 59 rental stalls; 45 of them are rented on a monthly basis. The market also averages 31 one-day space rentals each month.
"We feel that without the farmers market there's no anchor [for downtown], said Catherine Fox, tourism development manager at the visitors bureau.
Fox said she would like to see the farmers open their stalls on Sundays. Sometimes tour buses come to town then, and with the market idle the best Fox can do is offer a driving tour of the city.
The number of visitors stopping by the visitors bureau's office has climbed 20 percent a year for two years. Fox said 40,000 people are expected to stop by this year.
When Agnew first came to work in the family's business in the 1960s, most of its clientele were older people, he said. Young people came with revitalization of the market that began in the 1970s; now there are lots of tourists, he said.
Last week Agnew sold a woman headed home to California a 2-pound bag of lime. The woman's mother had told her that putting lime in her flowerpots would make her flowers grow better. The old oak seed bins are a favorite with tourists, Agnew said.
"I think the [visitors bureau] over there is doing one heck of a job supporting us," Crowder said. "The big problem is, the local population is not coming down and supporting us like they used to."
A sign of the importance of tourism to Crowder's business is the stock of "fancy" foods in his store. The shelves are filled with a variety of preserves and other home-style canned goods. This year the store started stocking Virginia wines.
"When we first opened here in 1980, we were a grocery store," Crowder said. "Now, I'm a gift shop in here." Wertz's is printing a gift catalog for the first time this holiday season.
Crowder attributes the drop in local customers wholly to parking problems. It is one of the major concerns of market-area merchants.
Gutherie said that her customers don't like to use the parking garages, even though they are nearby. And Crowder noted that the most convenient spaces in the garages are leased to downtown workers on weekdays and not available to shoppers.
Carty said she wishes the police wouldn't be quite as "vicious" in their ticketing. Tourists who have parked in front of the coffee shop have had their cars towed, she said. A hard-to-see sign among the tree limbs in front of the shop warns that parking is not allowed on the north side of Campbell Avenue between 3 and 6 p.m.
Downtown Roanoke's Kimbrough acknowledges that market merchants suffer from a public attitude honed on shopping malls and their acres of free parking. " `If you can't see your car, it's too far.' That's the mentality and it's not fair," Kimbrough said.
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