Digital Dummies

Social Media—it’s the new way of how to reach your audience. I can’t count how many times an influencer showed up at market, asked me for free stuff so they could help me grow my business using their big audience. And now with AI taking over the algorithms I’m targeted for all things farming and farmers market when it comes to sponsored advertising. So when this ad kept popping up in my feed telling me that the farmers market could be killing my future I had to investigate.

There he was, some millennial bearded BBQ bro trying to tell me that going to a farmers market was a waste of time. He went on to explain how farmers markets were a great way to “fellowship with other farmers and unload extra inventory, but they’re not designed to take your midsize farm from surviving to thriving…”  He used the typical fear-mongering buzzwords in bold--predictable sales and financial security. If I bought his services as a digital marketing agency he’d offer me “the ability to tap into an endless supply of customer, every day, without hitching up trailers, emptying freezers, setting up tents, and waiting for strangers.” [note: he obviously didn’t check his sales copy for grammatical errors]

Well, I couldn’t keep my fingers off the keyboard and told him exactly what I thought of his Instagram post. He came back telling me how he was going to use my comment as an educational opportunity for his audience and then proceeded to publicly trash talk my reply because he obviously knew more than I did. Fortunately, these types of hucksters don’t ruffle my feathers to much because I know I’ll still be at the farmers market long after his shtick has passed. I hold fast to Samuel Clemen’s sage advice not to argue with idiots because they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

World politics and elections don’t scare me, but people who want the latest generation of farmers to buy in to digital marketing schemes do. I base this on my experience in agriculture that spans twice the age of Mr. Know-it-all.

I helped to organize my first farmers market in 1988 with six vendors in a public parking lot on a Sunday morning. It had to close by 11 AM so the market wouldn’t interfere with tourist parking for the downtown businesses. Never mind that it had been agriculture that had originally attracted settlers to the area long before art galleries, luxury resorts, fancy restaurants and famous hot spring spas. Today that market has over 40 vendors, including the original six now on their third generation and the city bends over backwards to accommodate the market due to the customer draw.

Since then I’ve gone on to either help organize or be a founding vendor of several regional farmers markets as well as participate in established and growing markets. Some have become wildly successful, others have withered and closed, most often due to poor management. There have even been a few hostile takeovers as even farmers markets are not immune to predatory business practices.

If anything, I’ve watched many small and mid-sized farms and producers thrive because of the farmers markets. They’ve grown from selling at a few weekly markets to having multi-million dollar enterprises. This came about because they showed up every single week to their markets, used it as a platform for product testing, and made contacts with customers who elevated their products in new outlets. There have been numerous vendors who gather such a following that they open wildly successful brick & mortar locations.

For thousands of years this system for sales has endured through bazaars, fairs, souks, and of course, farmers markets. It’s about building relationships with customers. I don’t know where he got his idea they’re strangers. Just last week I had a new customer who had moved to the area from  upstate New York. She spoke lovingly about her farmers and how she missed them, but now she was cultivating new farmers. Imagine that.

This is something I’ve noticed throughout the years of befriending my customers. When I’m introduced by them it is done so in the possessive tense—their farmer. This type of relationship comes from being at a farmers market regularly, not by automating my sales via online platforms and drop-shipping to a faceless address. I couldn’t think of a more miserable existence.

There’s a reason farmers hitch up their trailers, load their trucks, and set up their tents each week. Yes, we love our fellow vendors, many of whom are considered family. No, we’re not here to unload our extra inventory as we produce goods specifically for the market. Ask the vegetable growers who have gone to smaller varieties of melons, heritage cultivars of tomatoes, pollenless sunflowers, and other varietals destined for direct marketing. And please tell me how AI marketing automation will sell ripe figs any faster that simply showing up at a farmers market already does. I can guarantee there are never any extra of those.

And what happens when there is an endless supply of customers, perhaps too many customers? You run out of products, those customers get frustrated and go somewhere else defeating the entire purpose. That’s why great farmers markets have multiple vendors selling similar products. You know what happens when a producer gains customers faster than they can produce products and opt for quantity? Quality suffers, every damn time. There’s no better way to tank your business than to grow too fast.

Listen, I’m not against using digital means to communicate with customers. I’ve been doing it since using a dial-up modem to connect to BBS. Even when automated, creating content for multiple digital outlets—Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Linked In, Tik Tok, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Quora, Discord, etc. quickly becomes overwhelming and for the most part, a waste of time. Even if all inquiries are funneled to a single mailbox, 99% of the will not result in a single sale and the ones who do purchase online rarely return opting for the next bright shiny product offering a slick video and bigger discount. And the marketing guru who set it all up for you still got paid.

Farmers markets have been the path to prosperity for centuries for those willing to put in the work unlike the digital dummies who believe that automation is the wave of the future. I’m certain when we’re still here on the streets and in the parking lots feeding our people, he’ll end up like MySpace, dead in the water with nothing to show but an inactive Instagram account.