With Ford Foundation support, PPS Commits $100,000 for Rebuilding Farmers Market Networks on Post-Katrina Gulf Coast

Nick Grossman
Jan 3, 2006
Dec 14, 2017

PPS will contribute $100,000 towards rebuilding markets as a means of invigorating economic activity in the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana and Mississippi. The funding, committed as part of a $900,000 re-granting program for public markets recently awarded to PPS from the Ford Foundation, will go to the Crescent City Farmers Market (CCFM) and its governing group, marketumbrella.org. The Ford Foundation has also committed an additional $150,000 in funding from its Katrina relief efforts, for a total commitment of $250,000.

Hurricane Katrina has largely devastated all aspects of some 15 markets on the Gulf Coast: commercial fishers, farmers, family enterprises (farmers, fishers, bakers, and more), market staff, and many market sites. “These markets provided a link between farmers and consumers,” said Steve Davies, Senior Vice President and Director of the Public Markets Program at Project for Public Spaces, “and many were also the site of social services for low-income communities through the United States Department of Agriculture Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program and electronic benefit program.”

The funds will be used to help resume operations of public markets in the region, in ways especially designed to meet post-Katrina needs, according to Richard McCarthy, executive director of marketumbrella.org and a founder of the Crescent City Farmers Market in New Orleans.

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, CCFM had four open-air locations each week, serving over 3,000 shoppers and nearly 100 vendors. Shoppers came from all over the New Orleans metropolitan area, and vendors from three states – Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. Annual sales of the Saturday market alone are $1.2 million; projected gross annual economic impact of the four markets was more than $11 million.

“We also provided mentoring to dozens of markets throughout the region, and had piloted the first electronic benefit transfer (food stamps) program for open-air markets in the Deep South,” McCarthy said.

In the post-Katrina world, “the ability of people to get the goods and services they need for re-building is imperative,” Davies said. “The low start-up cost of a market provides the place for that transaction to happen, and enables the rapid construction of economic infrastructure lost to the disaster. Families and businesses not only have a place to purchase and sell goods they need to get back on their feet but communities will have a place to host critical services that have been displaced by the storm.”

Among marketumbrella.org’s plans, are:

  • Relaunching regional markets. The Tuesday Crescent City Farmers Market opened just before Thanksgiving in uptown New Orleans with an estimated 2,000 shoppers. Festivus, a “Holiday Market for the Rest of Us” drew crowds to the Warehouse/Arts District in early December. “Working with French Market, Ocean Springs, Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, and other regional markets is central to our mission of initiating and promoting the ecology of the local economy,” McCarthy said.
  • Expanding on CCFM’s wireless/wooden currency network to keep local money in the local market and help create security in the regional food system.
  • Cultivating alternative philanthropy and mutual aid (the “circles of giving” which CCFM has termed “crop circles”) for vendors and shoppers at markets to invest into funds with a direct impact on vendors and host communities.
  • Providing workshops and other training/model programs to the community of more than 4,000 farmers markets nationwide.
  • Seeking out new partners for public markets: schools, for instance, can serve as appropriate host institutions as local infrastructure is redesigned or “useful markets” can include small business owners who provide services essential in individual rebuilding efforts as well as serve as a central point of contact for social service efforts.

Both Project for Public Spaces and marketumbrella.org are committed to the principle that our markets are points of rebirth in the face of devastation.

“The silver lining of this disaster can be that, with the right team of market partners, we can demonstrate the intrinsic value of markets to communities,” said Ford Foundation Program Officer Miguel Garcia.

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Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a non-profit organization founded in 1975 dedicated to creating and sustaining places that build community. We provide technical assistance, education, and research through programs in parks, plazas and central squares; buildings and civic architecture; transportation; and public markets. PPS has worked with communities in 48 states and in 20 countries around the world. With support from the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, PPS has initiated a $2.5 million regranting program to enhance public markets as focal points for community development.

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.

Marketumbrella.org’s mission is to initiate and promote the ecology of local economies: markets, meeting place, mentor and model. A department of Loyola University New Orleans at its Twomey Center for Peace through Justice, it embodies the Jesuit institution’s core social justice values and its role as a center for innovation. Among its other roles, it sponsors the Crescent City Farmers Market, which celebrated its 10th birthday this fall.

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