Market on the move
City and state leaders huddled alongside farmers under umbrellas Tuesday morning outside a Little Rock public housing building to mark the official launch of a mobile farmers market — a retrofitted bus designed to carry fresh produce to urban areas where the only vegetables for sale otherwise might be french fries.
The mobile market, called Fresh2You, springs from a coalition of church organizations, nonprofits and government agencies that have worked to bring an idea flourishing in other states to Little Rock’s food deserts, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines as an area where people live more than a mile from a grocery store. Large swaths of downtown and south Little Rock meet that standard, according to the USDA.
“The convenience stores located in these areas are not doing anything to try and promote healthy eating,” Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said. With this mobile market, he said, “we can bring the fresh fruits and vegetables right into the neighborhood.”
For the past three weeks, organizers have dispatched the mobile market on a soft launch to the Fred W. Parris Towers public housing complex and the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library and Learning Center.
Paul Kroger has been behind the wheel of that bus each of those mornings. The Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas is in charge of the mobile market’s operation, and Kroger found he was the only parishioner who had both a commercial driver’s license and the flexibility to volunteer during the day.
Others are training for their licenses and should start driving within the month, he said, and organizers hope to begin adding more stops in a few weeks, including Jesse Powell Towers and Mosaic Church.
In the meantime, Kroger said the initial outings have imparted some useful lessons: berries sell out quickly; leafy vegetables are popular with the older crowd; and people can be particular about foods with Southern roots such as collard greens.
The bus displays produce on custom metal shelves arranged at eye- and waist-level along its central aisle, where the seats used to be. Most days end with those shelves nearly empty, Kroger said, and some customers’ faces are already becoming familiar.
“Word is traveling,” he said. “We have some better cred on the street.”
Bill Wigley first visited the bus last week, but all the exciting produce had already sold out, he said. He tried again on Tuesday and walked away with a box of potatoes, blueberries, peppers and onions. Wigley lives in Parris Towers, and before retirement he worked as a truck driver.
“I used to haul this stuff,” he said before stepping back onto the bus to check out the watermelons.
Wigley is enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. That means the market sells him produce at half price while the farmers still receive full price for their crops, thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
On the bus, small white fans clipped to the shelves help circulate air around the produce. Most of the food is picked the day – or even the night — before it goes on sale, said Johnny Pettis, president of Raising Arkansas, a group of about 10 farmers who help supply the mobile market.
“We was out yesterday walking in the mud, getting watermelons,” he said. Farmers loaded the produce onto a refrigerated truck, and Pettis woke up at 4 a.m. Tuesday to help transfer it onto the bus.