How to get into your local Farmer's market

One thing you can do with leftover hydroponic prose is to sell it at a local farmer's market. But like many other kinds of tasks, this process is easier said than done. How do you get your hydroponic products into a farmer's market and move them into the local community?

Food Chain Verification

There might not be a lot of stringent rules on selling fresh produce. It's not regulated the same way that other sales are, such as the sale of raw meat, perishable dairy products or processed foods. Still, one of the building blocks of getting produce to market is fully document your grow method and be transparent about how the food is grown. You'll need to provide helpful details on what needs washed, whether food has been sprayed, and what its general environment is like.

The Selling Process

There are a number of ways to get your produce sold. In an ideal case, an existing vendor will buy your stock and simply sell it along with theirs. This gives you a “zero labor” way to sell your produce, but you have to sell it at less of a profit. The vendor will want a big markup to make it worth their time and effort to add your produce to their own.

Other ways to get this done involve sharing vendor space, or setting up your own shop. Sometimes you can do this with limited hours to save labor. You might man the stand yourself, or hire other people to sell it for you. Either way, having your own stand means you set the price and you make the profit.

Packing and Preparation

In addition to your strategy for marketing, there are a lot of nuts and bolts that need to be figured out. Products need to be cleaned appropriately, well labeled, and contained for sale. For greens, you may be bagging them or bundling them with certain kinds of fasteners. Lots of other types of produce are sold in those little corrugated paper bins that help provide consistent volume for sale. From tomatoes to peaches to berries to small peppers or eggplants, you can put a lot of your produce in these handy little boxes. For larger fruits and vegetables, use bushel baskets.

With all of this preparation in place, you might be able to make a local farmer's market a great point of distribution for all the food that you grow on a regular basis. Having an outlet for your hydroponic goods gives you more of a sustainable basis for operating plant cycles on a long-term basis. For more about what you need for this type of operation, check out Dealzer’s web site.