It’s not too early, perhaps, for thanksgiving. On a sun-splashed autumn afternoon, kids are chasing each other among tables that Dave Byrne, a farmer from nearby Monroe Township, has piled with apples, honey, mangoes, pears, and pineapples. Young mothers are selecting jalapeños and bunches of cilantro. On the grass at their feet, bright red and yellow plastic baskets hold pumpkins, squash, and dolls made of straw and decorated with scraps of colorful fabric. Latin music is playing on speakers beyond the 4-H tent and the taqueria. For a lot that until recently held the dilapidated remains of a bluing factory, rebirth as an urban cornucopia is a minor miracle of public policy, corporate philanthropy, and university enthusiasm.
This is the New Brunswick Community Farmers Market, the newer of two that bookend the Rutgers University campus here. The older market, opened in 2008 on a leafy plot alongside the Rutgers Gardens, is larger and more conventional, with a wider variety of stands and an upscale clientele interested in locally grown produce, artisan cheeses, buffalo meat, and enticing loaves of bread from a high-end bakery. It was also the inspiration for the newer market, which opened this July to serve a threadbare neighborhood with a large population of immigrants, mainly from the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Many of the neighborhood’s residents don’t have cars, and many get some kind of public assistance, says William K. Hallman, a professor of human ecology who helped start the newer market. The neighborhood’s residents don’t often eat healthful meals—in part, he says, because affordable, fresh produce is rare in the stores where they’re most comfortable shopping. A fan of the Rutgers Gardens Farmers Market—as it happens, a high-ranking executive at the pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson—wondered aloud one day whether it would be possible to give the urban neighborhood’s residents the same kind of access to fresh food that the Rutgers Gardens market offered people with cars.
Sensing opportunity, Mr. Hallman and others went to the company, which is based in New Brunswick, with a proposal. Rutgers is New Jersey’s land-grant institution, so its mission includes both promoting local agriculture and promoting good nutrition. The proposal suggested opening a new market downtown that would do both. The company quietly contributed $100,000 for the project and pitched in to help with marketing.
The plan that Mr. Hallman and others from Rutgers came up with is an ambitious one. They began by canvassing the neighborhood to learn what residents needed.
“A lot of this community comes from areas where you went out and got food fresh every day,” says Jaymie Santiago, the market’s young and cheerful manager. In New Brunswick, he says, many immigrants shop at small bodegas. “They’re familiar and convenient, and they have familiar products. But it’s difficult to find food that’s culturally appropriate, healthy, fresh, and cheap.” The neighborhood has an A&P, he says, but much of the reasonably priced produce there—broccoli and eggplant, for instance—is unfamiliar to people who grew up in Mexico. “The biggest issue is that most people are concerned about quantity rather than about eating healthy,” Mr. Santiago says.
“Little Debbies are cheap,” he adds, referring to the packaged dessert items, and so is fast food, so sugar and fat are problems. Mr. Hallman says childhood obesity is also a worry, as is “food insecurity"—a polite way of saying that some people in the community don’t know where their next meals are coming from.
As part of the project, Nurgül Fitzgerald, an assistant professor of nutritional science, conducted a survey that asked 545 local residents what they had in their refrigerators and pantries—a survey that will be repeated after the market closes for the year to see whether it has had an impact on day-to-day food choices in the neighborhood. Ms. Fitzgerald also helped plan programs to make sure that shoppers at the market could come away with nutrition information as well as fresh produce.
For instance, students from Rutgers’ Healthy Dining Team pass out nutritious snacks—today’s are apple slices with cheddar cheese and carrots with a dip made of powdered ranch dressing mixed with nonfat yogurt. At the same time, the students offer nutrition information in Spanish and English about the importance of calcium, which can help prevent lead poisoning. And Elijah’s Promise, a local soup kitchen that also trains the unemployed for food-service jobs, prepares healthful dishes that shoppers can taste and recipes to take home. (Mr. Santiago says he especially enjoyed a recipe for pasta with zucchini sautéed in olive oil and served with cherry tomatoes.) In return for its contributions, Elijah’s Promise was offered a budget to purchase produce from the market, some of which it cans or freezes for use over the winter.
While the nutritional programs were being planned, the university team scouted out locations, settling on the old bluing factory site because it is within easy walking distance of “a very vibrant African-American and Hispanic community,” Mr. Hallman says. Two city bus lines run close by, and the university’s large student, faculty, and staff population is only a few blocks farther away. Shoppers from the university are a key element of the market’s business model, because they’re likely to pick up the higher-cost items.
The name New Brunswick Community Farmers Market was chosen to make clear that this isn’t a university-only amenity. A requirement for participating farmers was that shoppers be able to pay with vouchers from public programs intended to help feed families. A key factor is a New Jersey program that provides people in the state’s Women, Infants and Children program with four $5 checks each summer that can be spent only at farmers’ markets, where they can be used to purchase any Jersey-grown products.
The market opened July 10 on a three-day-a-week schedule—Tuesday and Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings—and will stay open through the end of October. Some days Mr. Byrne is the only farmer at the market—his family’s farm is about 15 miles south of here—and some days there are one or two others as well.
Mr. Byrne, who speaks no Spanish, says he’s learned that residents who speak little English find it easier to buy not by weight but by the container, minimizing confusion and embarrassment. While he originally offered only produce from the 37-acre farm, buyers wanted bananas, mangoes, and pineapples as well, so a friend picks them up for him in Philadelphia. “And next year I’ll grow more hot peppers,” he says, noting that Mexican shoppers look not for unblemished jalapeños but for those with creases and scars that prove they’ve been on the vine longer and are more flavorful.
Also on hand are the taco stand (its homemade juices are popular—melon, cucumber, and hibiscus), a vendor selling handmade jewelry, a perfume vendor, a tent promoting the local 4-H Club, and sometimes a mobile unit from Saint Peter’s University Hospital in which people can get their blood-pressure and blood-sugar levels tested. Mr. Santiago, the market manager, says a local florist has already talked with him about selling flowers at the market next year. If health regulations allow, he’d also like to find vendors for other items that residents have asked about, like eggs and goat meat.
This year he has scheduled a number of special events to attract attention, like a celebration of Mexico’s Independence Day, an ice-cream day, a day honoring children’s’ soccer teams, and a day on which buses brought senior citizens to visit. And he hires local kids to help set up the tents on market days, as well as to carry shoppers’ bags and to translate when necessary. “I really like the connection we’re making with the community,” he says.
The community seems pleased, too. Shoppers come and go all afternoon, filling bags with Mr. Byrne’s apples and honey and peppers and, in many cases, paying him with vouchers. Kids continue to race happily around the site, and a soccer game springs up on the grass just beyond the tents. Teresa Vivar, a local activist who helped start the New Brunswick 4-H Club this year, is a regular fixture at the 4-H tent, where she greets many of the children. She uses the Spanish word for market to say that what has sprung up on the bluing-factory lot “is a dream come true for us, because we have been asking for a mercado.”
To see more photographs of Rutgers University’s farmers markets, visit http://chronicle.com.
