Written by Josie Reeve
As part of National Farmers Market Week, Farm2Facts is excited to celebrate and highlight one of our partners, the Lynchburg Community Market!
The Lynchburg Community Market is a vibrant community market, nestled in a river valley and built on the hills rising into the Blue Ridge mountains. The market has existed in downtown Lynchburg since 1783, making it one of the nation’s oldest markets, and is currently being led by Darrius Slaughter, the market manager. Professor Morales, lead project investigator for Farm2Facts, recently had the opportunity to visit the Lynchburg community market and learn more about Darrius and his work at the market.
Darrius is someone passionate about using the power of public markets to provide access to fresh, farm-grown food while supporting local area agriculture. He works for the city managing the farmers market, as well as multiple data collection projects. In his role as Market Manager, Darrius has worked to expand incentives such as the Fresh Match, SNAP programs, Kids Bucks, and Senior Vouchers, and has led innovative programming such as Mistletoe Markets, Harvest Festival, Night Markets, and Valentine’s Day Night. The Lynchburg market has also worked to utilize social media to showcase their vendors, programs, and communicate with the public, including a YouTube page which feature an official music video with the Lynchburg’s market slogan and mascot, “We got the beet!”. This and more has led to the Lynchburg Community Market’s recently have been awarded a gold certification from the Virginia Farmers Market Association, an association with which Darrius also serves as the Vice President.
Farm2Facts is excited to be partnering with Darrius and the Lynchburg Community Market to collect data for research on climate-smart food systems as part of the Southern Piedmont Climate Smart Project. The team at F2F will be supporting the market with economic impact data collection and will be supported by a team including colleagues at Ohio State and Georgia Tech.
To learn more about Darrius and the Lynchburg Community Market, check out their website, lynchburgcommunitymarket.com, or head to their YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook pages @LynchburgCommunityMarket!
