Ordinance brings "buying local" closer to home

Listen to the full audio story

Download the MP3

Every Tuesday, Violet Lopez opens for business at a Los Angeles farmers market on the corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Hoover Street.

But Lopez isn't a farmer - and neither are many of the vendors on this concrete walkway, which they rent for eight hours each week. Lopez makes and sells vegan lunches. There's also a clothing vendor, a tamale station and even the hum of a creperie.

An ordinance approved at Tuesday's Planning and Land Use Management meeting will allow farmers markets on private property in residential neighborhoods. Currently, they're limited to commercial space, and occasionally church and school parking lots in residential zones.

But the new farmers markets must be "certified," said City Planner Tom Rothmann.

"Again, certified markets only sell what they grow. They don't have prepared foods or craft items there. These are not glorified swap meets in any way."

Lopez thinks the variety of entrepreneurs makes the farmers market at Hoover and Jefferson so unique.

"For me, being a farmer's market is being different. We offer different food in the market, and it becomes a farmers market, not a traditional one only for fruits and vegetables. We are a more complete farmers market."

Even new residential markets' competitors welcome them. Chase Mosley has run the market on Jefferson for two years, and she's not afraid of losing customers to neighborhood sales. Instead, she thinks the more food encourages people to walk, meet their neighbors and buy local, the better - especially in low-income neighborhoods where fresh food is either scarce or expensive.

"There's some neighborhoods where more high-end grocery stores don't go. Lower-income areas. And so those people don't really have the option to get organic food or to try varieties of vegetables or fruits. That's not to say that people in lower-income areas don't want those foods. They just don't have access to them."

Rothmann says the new ordinance will encourage farmers to sell fresh produce in these "food deserts:"

"We're really just trying to open up some of our food deserts in the city, to have fresh fruits and vegetables coming into our neighborhoods that are really hurting for food - healthy, good, clean food."

If the new law works, home-grown businesses may start springing up all over Los Angeles.