We should work together to support our farmers

Ihave enjoyed the pleasure of representing El Dorado County Farm Trails, a nonprofit advocacy group for agricultural businesses in our county for two years. Our organization’s goals are to encourage respectful land use and stewardship and to enable the creation of economic value from appropriate uses of the county’s agriculturally zoned land.

Farm Trails operates the Wednesday night Bell Tower Farmers Market in Placerville. In recent weeks that market has been asked to move in an apparent breach of a contract that has been in place since 2014. As an organization, we lack an understanding of the motives of this forced move to another parcel in the city of Placerville. Nevertheless, we are open to focused e orts to make a new location work for the market and the farmers who depend on the market for substantial portions of their livelihood.

At the very least, the city should agree to guarantee basic services and safety at the newly proposed location — the Mooney Lot — on upper Main Street. The city should also consider the contribution of a modest amount of signage and advertising support as a way to assuage breaching a long-standing contract. Yes, there are people economically harmed by this decision. Our county calls them farmers and they have a right to farm by law here.

One way our organization addressed our goals for 15 years has been a partnership with the city of Placerville to operate the Wednesday night Bell Tower Farmers Market. For those 15 years, there have been some 25-plus farmers and other vendors selling locally grown and sourced products to El Dorado County residents. The market was deemed essential during the pandemic and provides key advantages to our disadvantaged residents by actually doubling the value of EBT funds used by customers. Our farmers have business licenses and comply with all state and county regulations to grow, create and sell their produce and products to the public. That contractual partnership has been unilaterally severed by the city in an apparent breach of the existing contract. Another unilaterally forced aspect of the market instilled in the last two weeks is the city’s requirement of 100% agricultural products at the market. Farm Trails has asked the county Department of Agriculture to weigh in, but the definition is quite broad. Does anyone remember the freeze of 2022 when very little produce was grown?

The market was invited onto the Main Street location by the city in 2008 as a way to create a community gathering place and to create enhanced foot tra c for the merchants in downtown Placerville. By all accounts, it has been successful at this goal. Our organization has been operating the market under that contract signed in 2014, which automatically renews on a yearly basis unless specific and timely communications are exchanged.

In 2023, after 15 years of creating desired foot tra c and community for downtown Placerville, the City Council has determined the market is an expensive menace and prevents hospice patients from getting medicine and competes with downtown merchants.

I am writing this letter out of concern for the market, the economic health of the farmers and an apparent waning support for the ag community that our county singles out as an important element of our local culture.

City o cials communicated their displeasure with the location of the market but delivered no written notice or instructions. Farm Trails suggested a survey of downtown merchants be conducted to determine

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