A group of producers who participate in the Nicoya Farmers Market want to return to the old location, where they held it since 2008, in the parking lot in front of the Nicoya municipal market. Since August, the Market Affairs Commission relocated the farmers market to the land behind the bus terminal building for “security” and to “improve service,” but since then, sales have decreased.
“Radishes are thrown away because it turns out they didn’t sell. Boxes of cucumbers have to be thrown away because they no longer sell, and then one wonders, well, do I continue planting the same as before or not?” questions Carlos Agüero, one of the market vendors who has been forced to reduce his farm’s production so as not to lose products and the investment he makes in the crops.
After more than two months in the new location, on Tuesday, October 22, the producers went to the Nicoya Municipal Council to request that they be allowed to return to the old location. The council members transferred the matter to the Legal Affairs Commission so it can analyze the request and provide a report.
“The point at which we find ourselves currently has caused our sales to decrease by almost 50%,” they detailed in the letter that the group delivered to the council members. “We humbly ask that we be authorized to carry out a permit agreement to use the property outside the market (previous location),” they specified.
Agüero said that at the end of October, he had to hire a laborer to help him throw away a thousand heads of lettuce that he couldn’t sell.
Imagine that on Thursday, we hadn’t sold even 10 heads of lettuce all day. Now on market days, we can bring about 60 heads of lettuce and before we could sell between 200 and 300,” he commented.
According to the producers, their main clients were people who used the bus service at the terminal and took advantage of it to buy fruits and vegetables, which is why they called it a “pass-through market.” But since the rear parking lot isn’t visible to those who pass through the terminal and the market, then the flow of buyers isn’t the same, according to the president of the Association of United Conservationist Producers of the Upper Zone of Santa Cruz and Nicoya (Spanish acronym: APROCUZA), Daniel Agüero.
“You went to your home and said “look, see that avocado, how delicious,” and you took a couple. But where they are now, nobody sees them. Another thing is that in the rainy season, it becomes a puddle of water and people go less often,” remarked the association’s president.
The administrator of the Municipal Market, Ileana Fajardo, agrees with him, saying that commercially, the location is not functional for producers and that she even perceives an impact on the sales of other businesses around there.
“The butcher shop owner told me that he has felt [a decrease in sales] because the person who stopped to buy a vegetable maybe had a craving for a soup and went into the butcher shop… I remember that the sodas (small restaurants) filled up a little more during the morning because people wanted a coffee,” related Fajardo.
Jarbey Luis Rojas, an alternate municipal council member as well as a member of the Municipal Market Commission, told The Voice of Guanacaste that the old venue, to which they are asking to return, was disorganized.
“One option was to move them to where they are today, which is an adequate and safe space where no one interrupts them,” he said, referring to the fact that the traffic from cars and buses in the market put both customers and vendors at risk.
Rojas believes that the producers should spread the word about their products on social networks and invite more farmers to participate in the farmers market to make it more attractive and increase the clientele. “Make that farmers market a more attractive market. It’s not the place that sells, it’s the people,” Rojas had commented on the day of the audience with the municipal council.
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