Peyton McGowan, American University
Cite as: McGowan, Peyton. 2025. “Understanding Food Access at Nourished Cities Green Ridge Farmer’s Market”. Food-Fueled, 2, e00022. https://doi.org/10.57912/28968269.
Web address: https://edspace.american.edu/foodfueled/issues/volume-2/understanding-food-access-at-nourished-cities-green-ridge-farmers-market/
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Introduction
The data described and analyzed in this paper answers the question of what social, economic and sustainable impacts farmer’s markets have on urban spaces. Additionally, this research seeks to focus on access to these impacts in terms of who is able to benefit from these potential positive impacts, why some may be excluded and how this issue can be improved to improve accessibility to benefits. The issue of exclusion arises primarily from the fact that the average visitor of a farmer’s market (FM) is a middle-aged white woman (Bubinas 2011; Robinson and Farmer 2017, 29). Moreover, existing research argues that FMs do not necessarily offer an effective alternative food network for low-income communities of color (Lambert-Pennington and Hicks 2016). However, as FMs have the potential to increase access to food and encourage sustainable practices, access becomes a central question of my research due to the fact that communities living in food apartheid or areas negatively impacted by environmental injustice are often low-income communities of color. Thus, how can FMs become more accessible to communities in need of solutions to the ease of food access? Sage, et al. find that FMs’ “ability to address food security for those most in need of improved access is yet to be seen,” but my research seeks to contribute to solving this problem (2013, 1273).
Located directly outside of a community museum in Southeast Washington, D.C. every Saturday from 10 a.m.—2 p.m. is the Nourished Cities Green Ridge FM (pseudonym to protect businesses and livelihoods). Running seasonally from April 20 to November 23, the FM recently closed for its second year in business. On the last day of the season, many of the vendors and staff sat with one another and reminisced about their favorite memories. For the past two years, Nourished Cities Green Ridge FM has become a place some Anacostia community members frequent every week to buy fresh produce. As the market closes, it continues to leave a positive impact on the community. The Green Ridge FM positively impacts the urban space of Anacostia by serving as a site of social gathering and community care, increasing access to food at reasonable prices and connecting community members to sustainable practices.
Background
Upon arriving at the Green Ridge FM for the first time, I was surprised by the small size of the market. With Pleasant Plains Farms (pseudonym) as the sole produce vendor, its long tables covered with red and white checkered cloths, reminiscent of picnic tables, dominate the space. Directly across from the several tables stacked with wooden crates full of fresh produce sits the FRESHFARM informational table with two to three staff members who work for the nonprofit that manages the market. Some days, these are the only tables at the market. Other days, they are accompanied by rotating tables offering other services from emergency contraception to legal aid.
After completing five hours of participant observation at the Green Ridge FM across three weeks from November 9 to November 23, I became very familiar with this space, the vendors and the staff. Additionally, I completed an hour of semi-structured interviews that added context and depth to this participant observation. I chose the Green Ridge FM as one of two FMs I will be studying in a comparative analysis due to its location in Ward 8, which has the highest poverty rate in D.C (District of Columbia 2020). Additionally, the area has been classified as a food desert by The Washington Post (Sanchez 2022). Food deserts are defined as “a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents have low access to a supermarket or a large grocery store” (Reese 2019, 5-6). However, following Black feminist anthropologist Ashanté Reese, I instead use the term food apartheid to refer to these areas as this terminology “names the structural conditions that affirm and normalize such practices” of major grocery store chains disinvesting in low-income Black communities and therefore, decreasing their access to food (2019, 7). As this research seeks to understand how to improve these communities’ access to food and other potential benefits of FMs, using the term food apartheid and recognizing the structural inequalities that have resulted in this issue become central to my theoretical approach.
Further, the second FM I have decided to study is the Palisade’s Sunny Orchards FM (pseudonym) located in Ward 3, which has the lowest poverty level (District of Colombia 2020). Through a comparative analysis between the two FMs, I can understand how socioeconomic status and other variables affect access to the impacts of FMs. Thus far, I have observed and gathered that through a variety of practices and ways of occupying space, Green Ridge FM emerges as a place that brings community together and puts community first. By understanding the ways in which Green Ridge FM is able to occupy urban space positively and serve its community with empathy, Green Ridge FM may serve as a model to pave more accessible alternative food networks. Considering the low socioeconomic status and food apartheid state of Ward 8, understanding the mechanisms the Green Ridge FM employs to increase access allows for a replication of these practices at other FMs to broaden their access beyond typical white female shoppers to include low-income communities of color that would be best served by their potential impacts. As my research thus far has been limited to examining the Green Ridge FM, the following research discusses the social, economic and environmental impacts of this market and how it increases access without yet delving into the comparative analysis with the Sunny Orchards FM.
Social Impacts
One chilly Saturday morning, I sat inside of the community museum across from one of the produce vendors, Monty, who I was conducting a semi-structured interview with. At some point in the interview, I described community care as an act in which community members help one another through some form of giving or exchange. When I finished, Monty replied:
“Yeah, community care. There has been a few instances throughout the year where you know someone comes in, and they’re shopping, and another individual comes in after, and they’ll pick up, they’ll pay because they’re using Produce Plus, you know, pay for the portion of that other customer’s purchase. I also had a group of fairly consistent ladies that would also come in and they’re all friends, the three of them, and they pay for each other consistently just so they can use Produce Plus and things like that.”
Produce Plus is a nutrition program run by the DC Department of Health that is accepted by FRESHFARM and provides all participants with $40 each month to purchase fresh produce (FRESHFARM, n.d.). In this way, produce is made more financially accessible to community members as they can purchase a quantity of fresh produce for virtually no cost at all. Additionally, as community members take it upon themselves to ensure that all their allotted Produce Plus money is spent within a month, they begin to spread these benefits throughout the community by paying it forward to other shoppers. These interactions demonstrate concrete and repeated practices of paying for others when possible as a result of Nourished Cities accepting Produce Plus. Through this process, community care is exemplified at the Green Ridge FM as community members take it upon themselves to pay for others’ groceries when they are in position to do so.
Moreover, these interactions of community care extend beyond shoppers as vendors and staff members often give out food and produce to community members at no cost. On one Saturday afternoon just after the market had closed for the day, I watched as Eduardo, another produce vendor from Parkview Farms, carried several crates of apples into the museum itself. These apples were given to people participating in the Harvest Festival taking place inside at no cost. On other days, Veronica and Ameera, FRESHFARM staff members, handed out homemade pumpkin cheesecake and baked butternut squash. When this food was handed out, shoppers often stayed and chatted with the staff members. Through these various instances in which food is made more accessible by being offered at no cost, food also serves as an element that encourages socialization and community care.
By offering free produce or prepared food, even if in small quantities, community members care for their own and open conversations with new or familiar faces through this act of giving. Moreover, as described in theories of space and place, “social practices and interactions shape places” (Casey 1996, 24). Thus, through these interactions of community care and socialization that simultaneously occur in a place that exists directly outside of a museum, a well-known community site, place at the Green Ridge FM is shaped into a site of community gathering that creates a sense of community. This sense of community is further underscored by the fact that communal activities create a sense of place (Casey 1996, 31). In this context, shopping for produce in a social space can be understood as a communal activity that creates not only a sense of place, but a sense of community.
In sum, through observing, participating in and speaking with people at the Green Ridge FM, I have seen the ways in which community members take it upon themselves to care for others by making sure no nutrition program benefits are wasted and by passing out food at no cost, exemplifying community care. Additionally, this act of giving serves as a point of socialization. Together, the social impacts of the FM positively impact the community, even if they are found in small acts of kindness. The repetition and frequency of these interactions demonstrates a sense of community that has been built in part due to these processes.
Economic Impacts
On my second Saturday at the market, I met Veronica for the first time. After chatting for a while, we discussed the purpose of my research, and I expressed to her that I wanted to know more about the nutrition programs accepted by Nourished Cities. She soon pulled out a clear plastic box filled with a number of different colored paper slips in the shape of dollar bills. Each slip was worth $1 and corresponded with a nutritional program. While the box did not include Produce Plus, it did include the Senior Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP), Women, Infants & Children Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program (WIC FMNP) and the Supplemental Nutritional Program (SNAP), which are all Federal Nutrition Programs. Veronica told me that Green Ridge FM accepts these Federal Nutrition Programs, and I felt surprised at how many they accepted. She continued to explain to me that these slips were used to “match” dollar-for-dollar up to $10 of what each customer spent. For example, one customer could spend $15 on produce at the market using SFMNP and receive ten $1 coupon slips in return to use on their next visit. Thus, produce is made more financially accessible through the acceptance of Federal Nutrition Program benefits. Nourished Cities enhance these benefits as they match up to $10 of each purchase. In this way, returning to the market to both buy local produce for oneself and support local farmers is incentivized by Nourished Cities.
To further connect this to the work of Ashanté Reese, she uses the term “geographies of self-reliance” to refer to how Black communities physically navigate the food landscape and what phenomenological concerns relate to this, such as personal and community priorities and racialized responsibility (2019, 8). Thus, by understanding the Green Ridge FM as a part of a geographies of self-reliance, it can be understood as a place of Black community in which the utilization of the acceptance and matching of Federal Nutrition Programs by the Nourished Cities FM becomes a way of navigating the Anacostia food landscape. As Nourished Cities’ acceptance and incentivization of Federal Nutrition Programs can be understood as form of community prioritization of the affordability of food, the utilization of these benefits emerges to increase access to food while simultaneously acting as a way of navigating the food landscape that has been disinvested in by dominant food networks.
Moreover, on my first Saturday at the market, I had written down the prices of each item being sold by Pleasant Plains Farms. Some items, such as pears, were listed for as little as $1 a pound, while other items like squash were listed for $4 each. However, $4 was the highest price per item or pound and Monty said the most ever charged per pound or item is $7. While I scribbled down the prices in my field notebook, I asked him how he decided on how to price items. He mentioned understanding that the community was low-income and that he was the only produce vendor in the market, meaning he was not worried about competition. However, he also noted that he took into account when customers complained about prices being too high and would often lower them accordingly. Blue Jay, a Nourished Cities staff member who chose his pseudonym based of his clothing and the native bird species he liked, also described himself as an advocate in this way during my semi-structured interview with him.
Through the combination of prices being listed at a low starting point due to the understanding Pleasant Plains Farms has for the community as well as their willingness to work with the community when pricing, produce is made more financially accessible for shoppers at the Green Ridge FM. They are even marked lower than the closest grocery store, the Safeway on Alabama Avenue, according to two older African American women I had briefly interviewed at one point in time. In this way, shoppers navigate the inequity of the food landscape as another aspect of a geographies of self-reliance as they advocate for themselves and their community to make food more financially accessible at the Green Ridge FM. These practices exemplify how “Black food geographies are influenced by the unequal spatial distribution of grocery stores but are not unilaterally defined by them,” as community members use the Green Ridge FM and its benefits as an alternative food network disconnected from grocery store chains to increase access to food despite structural inequalities (Reese 2019, 12).
In sum, the positive economic impact of the Green Ridge FM is spread to the community in a number of ways. First, by accepting Federal Nutrition Program benefits, people who may not otherwise be able to shop at the market are welcomed. Second, this benefit is further incentivized by Nourished Cities through the market match program. Additionally, the farmers’ and staffs’ willingness to take into account and advocate for members of the community concerned with prices demonstrates a prioritization of serving and caring for the community over profit.
Sustainable Impacts
On another Saturday at the market, there were no shoppers when I arrived. I greeted Monty and asked him if it had been a slow day. He told me that the morning when they first opened was busy since Produce Plus had come that week. While disappointed that I had not gotten there early to speak with some of these shoppers, Monty told me that a lot of people had also gone inside the museum for a Harvest Festival, so I headed inside to check it out. As the community museum is under the Smithsonian, the festival was hosted by the research institute. The Harvest Festival was a community event in which organizers passed out free produce that had been harvested from the community garden behind the museum. Additionally, Smithsonian brought in a speaker on urban gardening who spoke with the community and handed out vegetables for people to sample, as well as okra seed packets with guides on how to grow the plant. The crowd, consisting of about twenty mostly middle-aged Black women, all filed in a line afterwards to get their samples and seeds, conversing with each other as they waited.
While the Harvest Festival only happens a few times a year depending on the seasons of the produce, the museum also hosts other community engaged events. After I had headed back out to the market, I heard Monty telling some other shoppers to go inside and check it out. Thus, by the vendors of Nourished Cities working with the museum and being located outside of it, they can encourage shoppers to participate in educational events on sustainability and, more specifically, urban farming. Therefore, sustainability is encouraged throughout the community. Beyond lowering food miles with Pleasant Plains Farms being located a 35-minute drive away and supplying shoppers with compostable packaging for produce, the Green Ridge FM goes past the typical sustainable practices encouraged at FMs by working with the community museum to further encourage sustainability with special attention to urban space and urban residents. These ways of working with outside organizations exemplified by the museum and Nourished Cities vendors serve as an example to other urban FMs to expand the ways in which they encourage sustainability in the face of the current global climate emergency state.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the positive social, economic and sustainable impacts of the Green Ridge FM encourage forms of community care, make produce more financially accessible and promote sustainable practices within the community. By paying for others when shoppers have leftover Produce Plus, the market is a center of community care. Additionally, handing out food to shoppers at no cost acts as a point of socialization. Together, these interactions and the location of the FM outside of the museum have shaped the FM into a place of community gathering in which its positive social impacts can be felt by the community. Second, by utilizing practices of accepting and incentivizing the use of Federal Nutrition Program benefits, Green Ridge FM shoppers navigate their food landscape through geographies of self-reliance that allow them to find ways in which food can be more accessible to them in conditions of food apartheid through alternative food networks. Lastly, sustainability is encouraged through community partnerships and community engaged events. In sum, the Green Ridge FM makes these positive social, economic and sustainable impacts that are offered by the market more accessible to low-income communities of color by continuously working with them to set prices and therefore incentivize shoppers. In doing so, the Green Ridge FM recognizes the conditions of food apartheid that have initiated these issues of access. By understanding the mechanisms the Green Ridge FM employs to make its impacts more accessible, these practices can serve as models to other FMs around the country to broaden their scope of shoppers beyond the average white female shopper to bring the benefits of FMs to low-income communities of color.
References
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