On a weekend visit to the Omaha Farmers Market, you can find local growers selling tomatoes and greens, cottage bakers with a table full of bagels and artisan makers selling unique, handmade gifts. But spend a little time talking to Maggie Winton, Marketing and Communications Director for the Omaha Farmers Market, and it becomes clear that she sees something much bigger.
For Winton, the market is an ecosystem. It’s a place where farmers make a living. Entrepreneurs test new ideas. Shoppers discover foods they might not otherwise try and local dollars circulate through the community.
The market now has substantially more home-goods vendors, bakers, and other artisans than it did several years ago. Winton said the changing agricultural makeup of the market doesn’t necessarily mean there are fewer farmers. Some of the growers are urban farmers working with smaller amounts of land producing more focused yields than a traditional full-scale farm, while the dry, hot summer has impacted some of the variety available…