Students bring farmers market to campus
Auburn Hills junior Jessica Lalone browses through locally grown fruits and vegetables during the Campus Grow farmer's market on Oct. 6 on Broomfield Street.
Students can buy fresh local produce on-campus this semester at a new farmers market, which opened for the first time Tuesday.
Campus Grow, a registered student organization that focuses on farming and agriculture, fulfilled its goal of bringing fresh food to students after a year and a half of planning. The market will be on campus October13, and October 20 from 4 to 7 p.m. on the field west of His House Christian Fellowship.
Co-president Claire Guthrie said the process to get the market approved had been in the works since last fall, and it all started with asking students to sign a petition in favor of the idea.
“The petition had over 700 signatures,” Guthrie said. “We printed it, wrote a letter, and sent it to the Board of Trustees. The petition was meant to show this wasn’t some silly event we were trying to put on. There was actually a lot of support behind it.”
When Campus Grow first approached the university about it, their proposal was denied because there was too much reliability on CMU because of the possibility of students getting ill from eating food they bought at the market. This caused the group to contract with non-profit organization Real Food Grows, founded by Damian Fisher, in order to host the market on campus.
“We contracted last Friday, so we were freaking out because we only had three or four days to get vendors here,” Guthrie said.
Five vendors came to the farmers market and a total of 44 people attended.
Greg Neumann, owner of Spanky’s Kettle Corn, was one of the vendors present at the farmers market. He had been anticipating the market on campus, and said it was just a matter of when it would take place.
“This had already been in the works and I received the email Saturday,” Neumann said.
He had just left a different market in town the same day to set up at the CMU location.
Grand Haven sophomore Diamitra Niotis found out about the market from her friends.
“The fruits and veggies were the first things that caught my eyes,” Niotis said. “I just went grocery shopping, only to find out the produce here is really cheap.”
Guthrie said she hopes next time they will have more time to advertise so additional vendors and people can have a chance to see the market.
Each vendor has their own insurance and pays a fee to sell items there.
