NEW YORK - Tony Mannetta does not worry about having enough customers at the hugely popular farmers' market in Union Square in Manhattan, or most of the 27 other markets scattered across the city that he oversees for the Greenmarket program.
What he does worry about is having enough farmers for all of them. So later this summer he plans to head for the fields in Orange, Ulster and Dutchess counties, to knock on barn doors in an effort to meet the demands of the markets in operation and a dozen more that the program wants to open.
"We are running out of farmers," he said. "Could we use at least 50 more farmers in the next five years? Absolutely."
It is getting to be a common problem.
As people grow ever more picky about their vine-ripened tomatoes, and cities and towns from upstate New York to the San Francisco Bay area search for ways to keep their residents happy, it seems that just about everyone without a farmers' market is angling for one in their downtown. And many of them are finding that there are simply not enough farmers to go around.
Supply and demand
Though the most popular markets have no shortage of farmers - and sometimes even have waiting lists - the newer and less-established ones often cannot find enough. The result is a textbook lesson in supply and demand: Farmers who once haggled with middlemen to sell their crops are now being fought over themselves.
In Haverstraw, N.Y., for instance, it took nearly two years to line up three farmers to start a market in July 2000. "I thought, `Build it and they will come,'" said Mark Russo, a program director for the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Rockland County, who helped organize the market. "No way. There are just not enough of them."
A market in Bound Brook, N.J., could not open as planned this summer because not one of the 30 or so farmers contacted through phone calls, letters and visits during the past four months was available. "It's still a work in progress," said Karen Fritz, a resident who is leading the search.
270 in New York
The nation's growers will roll out their harvests at more than 3,000 farmers' markets this year, a record comeback for something that all but disappeared in many places during the last century with the spread of refrigeration, prepackaged foods and supermarket chains. New York state has 270 markets, or nearly one-third more than in 1996, trailing only California, with 403 markets, in sheer number. Markets in New Jersey nearly doubled, to 49, during the same period.
