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Pork producers should leave Kentucky’s farmers alone!

By Joel Peyton

Why complicate something as simple as selling produce at a farmers’ market on Saturday morning? Yet that’s exactly what Frankfort’s wasteful bureaucracy appears eager to do.

For example, the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy (GOAP) shelled out $1.5 million in grants last year to farmers’ markets across the commonwealth. However, estimates by the state Department of Agriculture indicate that Kentucky’s farmers’ markets generated only $5.4 million in total revenue during 2004.

This year, GOAP plans on handing out $2 million – 33-percent more than last year – without any evidence the money is being well-spent.

Apparently, Frankfort’s high-falutin city folk think they know how to run a farmers’ market better than the farmers themselves. Take, for instance, plans made by the Governor’s Office for Local Development (GOLD) to fork over $75,000 for the building of a “permanent” farmers’ market in Bardstown. This extravagance will cover 8,360 square feet, complete with public restrooms.

How silly is it that Frankfort’s politicians think they know better than Bardstown’s farmers how to build and run a farmers’ market?

It is likely that Nelson County farmers have been taking their crops to market in downtown Bardstown since the city was founded in the 1770s. Somehow this arrangement has worked splendidly for more than 225 years without Frankfort’s “assistance.” Why are the good folks at GOLD so sure they can improve on centuries of farm-to-market retailing?

GOLD suggests nine new jobs will be created, generating about $196,000 in household earnings. True, but estimates show the entire project will cost at least $464,000. That means Bardstown’s taxpayers – farmers included – will likely fork over the difference between whatever the city gets from GOLD and GOAP, to … GULP! … pay for the remainder of the watermelon-size cost of building this market.

Open primarily during the summer and early fall, farmers’ markets don’t require a permanent location. What will the people working in these nine new jobs do when farmers have little if anything to sell?

The low relative set-up, operating and overhead costs of a farmers’ market are what make these enterprises potentially profitable. To start one, no fancy shelter or signage is required. A farmer needs simply to load his pick-up truck with whatever is ripe, find a nice location on the side of the highway or in a community parking lot somewhere and – voila! – he’s in business.

A Sharpie and a nice piece of cardboard pretty much complete the marketing process. Then, he’s ready just to sell his potatoes and corn right out of the truck bed to interested passers-by.

This type of association results in what economists call a “positive-sum game.” Both farmers and customers are better off when the transaction concludes. Farmers appreciate the extra money in their pockets while their customers think fresh vegetables served at dinner makes their family better off, too.

However, Frankfort could well turn farmers’ markets into a negative-sum game if subsidies extracted from taxpayers are used to construct them. Farmers may benefit from building and using a shelter while taxpayers end up footing the bill for such a facility. As a result, only one party “wins.”

Politicians hunting votes promote the myth that local farmers’ markets will attract tourists. Why, then, are taxpayers being forced to shell out thousands of dollars to Bardstown – already the home of some of Kentucky’s most recognizable tourist attractions, including Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam and Stephen Foster’s outdoor drama “My Old Kentucky Home?”

Much better options exist for using tax receipts to attract tourists than building farmers’ markets in small towns. After all, how many out-of-state tourists want to drive to Kentucky to shop at a farmers’ market when they already have such markets closer to home?

Instead, why not invest the money being used to fund farmers’ markets in a cost-benefit analysis showing the benefits of improving or privatizing an existing Kentucky State Park? Improving a state park would likely drive much more tourism traffic to our state than would a fancy farmers’ market.

Besides, we don’t recall seeing a single farmer rolling into Frankfort on his tractor, banging his pitchfork on the front steps of the capitol while angrily demanding money for a farmers’ market. Instead, most of Kentucky’s farmers prefer the freedom of operating their own markets without government’s “help.”

After all, farmers know how to plow a field and sell their produce better than anyone else. Government officials, meanwhile, just keep doing what they have always been good at: Harvesting and distributing pork. Come to think of it – they should leave that function to the farmers, too!

Joel Peyton is a research analyst for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank.

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