Mission | St. Joe Farmers Market


Home Mission & History Market Members Photo Gallery (coming) The Beet Blog Producer Page Links Contact Us	The St. Joseph Farmers’ Market, founded in 2000 under the auspices of Healthy Community Partners, has these central purposes: Building community relationships by directly linking those who produce food with those who consume it. Providing local producers an opportunity for optimum economic return through direct marketing of their products. Ensuring local consumers an opportunity for fresh, healthy food which is the harvest of their own bio-region. Retaining local money in the local area by direct exchange among people. Providing a natural setting that invites people to meet and to enjoy the yield of what a community working together can offer. Educating people toward greater understanding of their interdependence upon one another and their ties with the earth, and, thereby, to an awareness that they are shareholders in sustaining this rural area. Our first market opened in 2000 in the parking lot of the old Del-Win Ballroom in St. Joseph. It was successful from the start, proving that the community was eager and ready for a farmers’ market. It has since moved to its current home on the greenway south of Resurrection Lutheran Church next to the Wobegon Regional Bike Trail. The market is unusual in that it was founded by local community members rather than by farmers looking for a way to sell their surplus products. Those community members wanted to provide area residents the opportunity to buy fresh produce from local growers and producers, and at the same time, offer local growers a venue to sell their vegetables, fruits, and other products. Sustainability can be defined as a social, economic, and environmental system that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland, 1987). The founders of the market developed a mission statement early on with sustainability at its heart.

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The St. Joseph Farmers’ Market, founded in 2000 under the auspices of Healthy Community Partners, has these central purposes:

Building community relationships by directly linking those who produce food with those who consume it.
Providing local producers an opportunity for optimum economic return through direct marketing of their products.
Ensuring local consumers an opportunity for fresh, healthy food which is the harvest of their own bio-region. Retaining local money in the local area by direct exchange among people.
Providing a natural setting that invites people to meet and to enjoy the yield of what a community working together can offer.
Educating people toward greater understanding of their interdependence upon one another and their ties with the earth, and, thereby, to an awareness that they are shareholders in sustaining this rural area.

Our first market opened in 2000 in the parking lot of the old Del-Win Ballroom in St. Joseph. It was successful from the start, proving that the community was eager and ready for a farmers’ market. It has since moved to its current home on the greenway south of Resurrection Lutheran Church next to the Wobegon Regional Bike Trail.

The market is unusual in that it was founded by local community members rather than by farmers looking for a way to sell their surplus products. Those community members wanted to provide area residents the opportunity to buy fresh produce from local growers and producers, and at the same time, offer local growers a venue to sell their vegetables, fruits, and other products.

Sustainability can be defined as a social, economic, and environmental system that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland, 1987). The founders of the market developed a mission statement early on with sustainability at its heart.