URI Free Farmer’s Market is here! Its mission? For students to gain an increased access to fresh fruits and vegetables. PHOTO CREDIT: James Singer
The URI Free Farmer’s Market returned to the Quad on Thursday, distributing fresh produce, nutrition information and wellness tips to the URI community.
The farmer’s market, which was initially piloted in the spring and summer, has quickly become a staple for many students on Thursday afternoons, according to event co-directors Amanda Missimer and Kelli Kidd. Students lined up across the Quad 20 minutes before the market opened at 11 a.m.
Missimer, a professor of nutrition and food sciences, and Kidd, a nutrition specialist, coordinate and run the event along with help from the Campus Recreation Department and Dining Services.
“Students on college campuses have really decreased access to fresh fruits and vegetables,” Missimer said. “This is really just an effort to increase access to them.”
According to her, a lot of planning goes into the farmer’s market each week. The event is staffed by student volunteers, local farmers and faculty from the nutrition and food sciences department. They work together to sort through the week’s harvest and move produce from the farms before the farmer’s market starts on Thursday.
Last week, the farmer’s market distributed hundreds of pounds of fresh produce, including beets, zucchini, apples, broccoli and fresh eggs, according to their Instagram. The food was sourced from three local farms, East Farm and Peckham Farm, which URI operates, and professor Rebecca Brown’s teaching garden.
In addition to the fresh fruits and vegetables, Campus Recreation offered students health and wellness tips and created thank you notes for the event organizers and others involved such as Rebecca Brown, associate professor of the Department of plant sciences and entomology, and Tim Sherman, a greenhouse manager at URI.
“We’re just happy to be a part of it,” Majo Muentes, a student employee at Campus Recreation, said. “It’s a holistic approach to wellness.”
Along with the Campus Rec, Dining Services provided a live demonstration of recipes and samples of food that could be made with the week’s fresh produce.
Grace Kennedy, a senior at URI and volunteer at the farmer’s market, noted how much she enjoys seeing familiar faces each week and being able to provide quality produce to students.
“Being able to give students an opportunity to come and pick out free produce and to use it and give them recipes and show them how they can make it at home is really, really cool to me,” Paige Nickla, a senior at URI and a volunteer at the farmer’s market, said.
Missimer said that the increase in food insecurity, especially since the start of the pandemic, was one of the major factors in pioneering the farmer’s market.
“You would think ‘Oh, there’s so much food accessible, like through the dining halls and Rhody Market,’ but things like that all of that cost money, and not every student has that $3,000 to pay for the meal plan, and that’s a very much a real problem that I’ve learned to notice,” Nickla said.
Missimer stated that the farmer’s market currently serves about 1.4 percent of the student population and would love for it to expand in the future.
Missimer and Kidd said that they plan to continue the market next spring and into the foreseeable future. They hope to expand their offerings to dairy products soon as well.
“Certainly we want to try to make this a centerpiece on Thursdays in the future going forward,” Kidd said.