Pleasant Living Magazine

American Farmland Trust (AFT) along with hundreds of voters has just crowned the King George Farmers Market, King George, Virginia, as one of America’s four favorite farmers markets.  The award is the culmination of AFT’s summer long “America’s Favorite Farmers Markets™” contest.  It represents the integral role that the King George Farmers Market plays in its community and the avid support demonstrated by the dedicated customers it has generated in its second year of operations.
Here is what one King George Farmers Market customer had to say:

This is a community that started out with the necessity of small, family farms in the early 1700s when it was founded. Today, generations later, you still find people supplementing their diets and income, from a little to a lot, with the fruits of their labor and the blessings of the land. Too many people are too many generations removed from a small family farm. Not so in King George. You'll find fields of corn and soybeans, but you'll also come across patches of squash and peas. You don't have to search for a label to tell you where your food originated. You won't find a product of California, Brazil or Mexico. You'll only find products of King George County, Virginia. Your sense of home and a sense of community is strongly tied to food. The KG market succeeds at uniting those three things: Eat locally, eat fresh, eat sustainably.

In its second year, the AFT contest registered over 60,000 votes in support of local farmers markets across the nation and featured nearly 1,300 participating farmers markets.  The King George Farmers Market registered 1,082 of these votes and swept the ‘boutique’ markets category. King George Farmers Market will receive a shipment of No Farms No Food® tote bags, along with other prizes including free printing services from igreenprint and free graphic design services from Virginia based design firm, SQN Communications. The totebags will be distributed at an event open to the press and public on October 23, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. at the farmers market. The King George Farmers Market is located in the parking lot at King George Elementary School at the corner of Route 3 and Route 205 in King George, VA.  Visit the King George Farmers Market Facebook page for more information.

Along with the King George Farmers Market, the City of Rochester Public Market in New York took home the large market prize, the Falls Church Farmers Market in Virginia, the medium, and Champaign County Farmers Market in Ohio the small category.  Farmers markets represent one of the great ways that consumers can support their local farmers, farmland, communities and regional economies. Many barriers stand in the way of scaling up local farm production to meet the burgeoning demand for local food.  AFT is working to support policies and programs to protect farmland, reduce barriers between farmers and consumers, and encourage communities to plan for agriculture and regional food systems.

Find out more about American Farmland Trust’s Growing Local Campaign: visit

farmland.org/local

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