The Athens Farmers Market Story
In art and literature, food serves as a symbol for intimate communion. Markets carry a similar spirit, as they use food to inspire a greater sense of community and togetherness.
In 2007, two UGA graduates with a passion for local food and agriculture insisted that having a farmers market in Athens was essential to the development of a more cohesive Athens community. Their idea successfully became a part of the ACC Gov 10-year-plan. They were able to get together a group of local farmers, who had been selling their produce at a small pop-up market in the courtyard of Big City Bread, to join their mission in starting a regular farmers market in Athens. Along with the decision to host the market at Bishop Park, these founding farmers enacted 3 requirements that all produce vendors must abide by. These were intended to ensure that the food being sold was ethically and sustainably produced.
Here they are:
Farmers must grow everything they sell.
They must practice under USDA-certified organic rules.
Their farm must be local, falling within the 25-county region that surrounds Athens Clarke County.
The grand opening took place on May 17th, 2008, and 3,000 community members celebrated with us at Bishop Park. In 2010, we started a partnership with Wholesome Wave Georgia and began doubling SNAP/EBT dollars, in an effort to extend the power of SNAP to the local level. WWG is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all Georgians have access to fresh food, one of many local efforts in fighting food insecurity and keeping systemic racism out of our food system.
2010 was also the year we added a Wednesday evening market downtown, providing more opportunities for community members to participate in Athens’ local food scene.
As our relationship with WWG continued to evolve, in 2017 we piloted a “food prescription” program, where those involved are given a weekly allowance of tokens intended to provide their household with a sufficient number of fruits and vegetables for the week. This program continues to be an essential pillar of the market, as it expands the access and availability of our food to a greater portion of the Athens community.
In addition to our wide selection of produce, art, and ready-to-eat-food, we have various recurring events at the market. The children’s booth, open from 9-12, features a nature-related activity to occupy the kids while their parents do their weekly shopping. The cooking demo table hosts a local chef who incorporates produce that you can find at the market into a dish to sample while shopping. Lastly, we always have live music playing, whether you’re at the Saturday Bishop Park market or the Wednesday one downtown- it’s definitely a staple part of the market day.
At AFM, the construct of art materializes itself in almost every aspect of the market. Our relationship with each other, food, music, and craft all stand as an expression of love and community, articulated by the shared understanding that art is always everywhere.
