The Silver Spring Penguin

ROCKVILLE — County council members want health inspectors and economists to get their collective shit straight, and to get more farmers to the county’s farmers markets.

“We want to attract people to our town centers where these markets are taking place,” council member George Leventhal (D-At large) told colleagues at Thursday’s meeting of the public-health committee.

Farmers markets are victims of their own success, according to the county’s department of economic development. Currently, city slickers can score locally produced foods at 13 county markets, including a weekend operation in downtown Silver Spring, and customers want more.

The problem is, health regulations and licensing fees don’t exactly encourage out-of-county farmers to get in on MoCo’s farmers-market action, legislative analyst Vivian Yao said. According to the health department, MoCo farmers cough up $25 each season to push jams, jellies and tasty baked goods; $50 each season to sell meat, cheese and other things that need to stay on ice. Compare that with the $175 that all out-of-county farmers pay each season, no matter what they sell.

“We have farmers saying that Montgomery County’s regulations are too much of a hassle, so they go to other counties instead,” Leventhal said.

An informal Penguin survey of downtown Silver Spring’s farmers market came up with at least one non-MoCo vendor — an Allegheny cheese monger. Freshfarms, the market’s nonprofit organizer, requires its vendors to do their farming thang no more than 150 miles from market.

Those out-of-county farmers can come in handy, given MoCo’s shrinking farm population. According to the economic-development department, fewer county residents are getting in on the farming action. It’s tough work, has a low return on investment, and is at the mercy of Mother Nature and a slew of regulatory bodies. It goes a long way to explain why county farmers are an average 57 years old.

Even if more farms were added to MoCo’s roster of 50 veggie producers and 10 meat producers, it still won’t mean a farmers market on every block. Zoning restrictions will see to that, the economic-development department reports.

Beyond the issue of who sells what, and where they’re from, is how they sell it. Health department regs require vendors who prepare food on site to cough up a daily fee of $65. That price, in addition to the seasonal fees, cuts back on cooking demonstrations and turns off vendors pushing popcorn and boiled peanuts, Sharon Dooley, with the farmers market in Olney, told council members.

That regulation also gets in the way of vendors who slice pieces of food for shoppers to sample. On one occasion, a health inspector tore into one vendor for not keeping proper sanitation while passing around little nibbles, Dooley recounted. (Namely, the vendor didn’t have the required hand-washing station and didn’t provide snackers with individual utensils.)

And council member Marc Elrich (D-At large) wasn’t gonna have any of that.

“If it’s a health issue, then everything’s got to be sealed, and I don’t want to go there” Elrich said. “Reaching into a pile of cheese with a toothpick doesn’t guarantee that my finger won’t touch the cheese.”

Still, the regs are there to keep people from getting sick, explained Ulder Tillman, director of the county’s public-health services. While there haven’t been many epidemics linked to farmers markets, foodborn illnesses tend to be under-reported, she said.

But Tillman also recognized the regulations’ economic impact on farmers and the urban markets they serve. The health department, she said, would be willing to level the playing field for in-county and out-of-county farmers and charge a uniform seasonal fee.

“The need for consistency is going to be an important piece” to the markets’ success, council prez Mike Knapp (D-District 2) said.

Photo: The sign says “Potatoes, $3.50 a box”. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.