Farmers' Market - Planning at Its Finest!

The City of Texarkana, TX has maintained its farmers’ market for over 12 years.  This program has developed possibilities for local farmers, enhanced traffic to downtown locations, and increased the interest in wellness and local food among the community.  Through adapting to public needs, logistics, and global climate the farmer’s market has found unique ways to serve vendors and customers while developing placemaking opportunities, engaging community partners, and enriching the local economy.
With help from the Farmers Market Promotion Program grants provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Texarkana Farmers Market has made large developments in their 10-year history.  With the growth in the number of vendors, pandemic response, and additional marketing opportunities, the Texarkana Farmers Market has gone through several transformational changes that have required flexibility to remain consistent.   This session will discuss many of the forced adaptations that created additional successful programs, as well as adaptations to further increase placemaking in downtown Texarkana.
Prior to the beginning of the Texarkana Farmers Market, much of the business and commerce in Downtown Texarkana had moved away from the rail line to I-30 in North Texarkana.  Many factors played into re-developing Downtown Texarkana, and those efforts persist today.  However, when the Farmers Market began most of these efforts had not begun and several of the buildings in Downtown Texarkana laid dormant and abandoned.  Beginning in a small city-owned parking lot, growing into a larger parking lot, to requiring street closures and expansion across State Line Avenue into Arkansas, the Texarkana Farmers Market has been a great success for attracting people to local vendors and breathing new life into south Texarkana. 
Partnerships with a variety of organizations including the Housing Authority of Texarkana, TX, and local Arts organizations began new offerings that continue to grow the interest of a variety of Texarkana residents and those traveling from smaller towns in the surrounding area.  With our unique location, Texarkana is within an hour’s drive of four states and serves as the hub for many communities for shopping and entertainment.  We have taken a “shop local approach” to drive people to our local vendors to promote their businesses, as well as promote healthy food options. 
Programs that have evolved from the original market include the TXK Boxes, Pop Up Market, Cultural Food Markets, Live Cooking Demonstrations, Farm Spotlights, and Video Cooking Demonstrations.  The TXK Market Boxes was developed to bring local food to low to moderate-income neighborhoods and further evolved into a drive-through option for people to purchase our vendor’s goods while the Summer Market season is not open.  This program includes recipes, produce, meats, spices, and jarred goods.  This has become an option for those that enjoy the mail meal services provided by Hello Fresh and various other services.  Pop Up Markets are a program that is hosted by Farmers Market Staff where vendors set up in city-developed community gardens in low to moderate-income neighborhoods to help with travel restrictions to our regular Market location.  Cultural Food Markets are a night market, hosted on the third Saturday of each month.  This program will focus on a different culture each month, and often includes a cooking demonstration where someone shares information and food from their culture.  Live cooking demonstrations is new to our market after we were able to purchase a portable outdoor kitchen.  Live cooking demonstrations can adapt to any other program such as cultural food events and breakfast for those visiting during our normal morning market hours.  Farm Spotlights are a social media push to go behind the scenes to see our vendors’ farms and share where the great food at Texarkana Farmers Market comes from.  This program is intended to further promote our local food producers and develop familiarity with the friendly faces at the Texarkana Farmers Market.  Video cooking demonstrations are held at a community center with a commercial kitchen.  This program allows local chefs and food producers to share recipes while using only local food from our vendors.  This is a great marketing tool for the market, restaurants, and vendors.
In addition to all these programs that are offered we also focus on weekly themes and events to drive traffic to the market.  The biggest event of the year is the Best Salsa in the Ark-La-Tex Competition.  This event always closes the market season, and salsa producers from the surrounding area come and submit their salsas in one of our categories which includes, Hot, Medium, Mild, and Specialty.  This is a great attraction for the community and leads to a great amount of business for vendors and traffic for Downtown Texarkana.