“South Madison needs fresh vegetables.” Robert Pierce celebrates 25 years as market manager of South Madison Farmers Market

The impetus of the South Madison Farmers Market was to provide healthy, fresh food in an area of town that has often been, throughout its history, a food desert. The face of the South Madison Farmers’ Market has long been Robert Pierce, who recently celebrated his 25th anniversary as the market manager.

“We make sure that we have everything that the people need at the South Madison Public Market, and if there’s something that I don’t have, I’ll see if another farmer has it and try to get it for them,” Pierce tells Madison365. “If not, we’ll make sure we have it for next year’s markets. We try to make sure that we touch every nationality with our vendors and products because South Madison is a melting pot. We like to have things at the South Madison Farmers’ Market that you can’t find anywhere else.”

The South Madison Farmers Market is held at the Madison Labor Temple on Sundays, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and Tuesdays, 2-6 p.m. It’s also held at the Novation Center, 2500 Rimrock Rd. on Mondays, 2-6 p.m. This past Friday, the first South Madison Farmers Market of the summer was held in the giant parking lot outside of the Black Business Hub, 2353 S. Park St. All four South Madison Farmers Market locations will be selling fresh fruits, vegetables and produce until late October.

“We first started 25-26 years ago where the [Access Community Health] Clinic is and then we got shifted back to where the Black Business Hub is [the former Villager Mall parking lot] and when they built the Hub, we went back to the Labor Temple,” Pierce remembers. 

When Pierce took over the market a quarter-century ago, he managed 37 vendors, but he says he initially faced challenges, including accusations that he was “stealing money” and people who thought he was an “angry Black man.”

“But Lee Cunningham [department head of the Dane County Cooperative Extension]  encouraged me to persist,” Pierce remembers. “He told me to hang in there. He said, ‘Even if you got to be there by yourself, you hang in there, because South Madison needs fresh vegetables, and you’re the man that’s going to do it.’ And I’ve been there ever since.”

Pierce was born and raised on Madison’s South Side and has been growing and selling organic produce and practicing urban agriculture from his Half the 40-Acres Farm since the mid-1980s. “I started doing organics in 1983. So they kind of call me the grandfather of organics around here,” he smiles.

He has headed up the South Madison Farmers’ Market since 2001.

“I grew up in South Madison and I know all of the people over here,” he says. “So it was easy for me to head up this South Madison Farmers Market when they needed somebody long ago.”

For many Madisonians, the South Madison Farmers’ Market is a good second option to the massive Dane County Farmers’ Market held on Saturdays downtown, which is an amazing experience, but can be overwhelming due to the sheer number of people who attend each week. The South Madison Farmers’ Market hosts a diverse array of vendors from the greater Madison region and you’ll find things like locally grown produce, veggie garden starters, fresh sprouts, hanging baskets, and more.

“We have everything that you can get downtown, pretty much, except we don’t have a bakery and we don’t have eggs,” Pierce says. 

Beyond the two days at the Labor Temple, you can also find the South Madison Farmers Market at the Novation Center on Rimrock Rd.

“They appreciate it over there. There are the elderly who have that little community there with the elderly center. So they really like it, because it’s so close and they can walk over and get fresh vegetables,” Pierce says. “There are people in the neighborhood who depend upon the market, and we love being there.”

Pierce is excited to be at the Black Business Hub, the fourth date for the South Madison Farmers’ Market (and third location). Because of the big parking lot construction last summer, they weren’t able to host markets there.

 

“We’re excited to come back to the Hub. We actually think that we can make that a really good market,” Pierce says. “People will go to that place, who wouldn’t go to the Labor Temple or the Novation Center, because the Hub is in the heart of their neighborhood.”

Beyond providing healthy foods to the people of South Madison and beyond, Pierce is also using agriculture to make a difference in people’s lives. In 2008, Pierce launched the Program for Entrepreneurial Agricultural Training (PEAT), which works with low-income and at-risk youth, and in 2015, he established the Farming After Incarceration Release Initiative (FAIR) program with Neighborhood Food Solutions, which engages formerly incarcerated individuals in urban agriculture to create an economic opportunity for themselves, their families, and their neighbors.

“What I’ve been doing with Neighborhood Food Solutions is trying to teach felons how to grow food and have them set up markets at my market so they can become self-sufficient,” Pierce says. “That’s the ultimate goal.”

For Pierce, the power of gardening, farming, and putting your hands in the soil is a therapeutic thing. Pierce makes his own nutrient-rich compost in his greenhouse and hosts a free food scraps recycling drop-off at the Tuesday South Madison Farmers’ Market.

“I think we have one of the better markets in town. People really appreciate what I do, and I think that’s what makes it better. That’s what really keeps me going,” he says.