PlanningxChange 131: Alfonso Morales + Edna Ely-Ledesma: Public Markets

In this episode of PlanningXchange, we speak with Professor Alfonso Morales and Edna Ely-Ledesma of the University of Wisconsin-Madson about the unique and often overlooked role of public markets in shaping vibrant, inclusive urban environments. Drawing on their research and on-the-ground experience, they share insights into how markets serve not just as commercial spaces, but as critical infrastructure for food access, social connection, and local economic resilience.

We explore the history and diversity of market types across different regions, the policy frameworks that support or hinder their success, and the role markets play in community-building and placemaking. Alfonso and Edna also discuss the innovative Farm 2 Facts toolkit—a software platform they developed to help market managers collect, analyze, and visualize data on their operations. This decision-support tool empowers cities and market operators to better understand food distribution, ecosystem services, and community impact in real time icicle.osu.edudpla.wisc.edu.

For more information and to explore the toolkit, visit farm2facts.org icicle.osu.edu

In Podcast Extra, Alfonso recommends ‘The Cadfael Chronicles’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cadfael_Chronicles. Edna recommends ‘Conclave’ the film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conclave_(film)

Jess recommends ‘Alone Australia’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alone_Australia. 

Pete recommends ‘Bullet Train Explosion’ https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81629968

Podcast episode released 26 May 2025.

Episode Transcript

Jess Noonan (00:00):
This podcast is supported by VPLA.
Victorian PlanningEnvironmental Law Association.
Welcome to the Planning Exchangewhere we interview built environment
professionals who are doinginteresting work beyond the ordinary.
I'm Jess Noonan and I'm joinedby my colleague Peter Jewell.
today we're speaking with ProfessorAlfonso Morales, an assistant professor

(00:21):
Edna Ely Ledesma from the Departmentof Planning and Landscape Architecture
at the University of WisconsinMadison, which is one of the 10 largest
research institutions in the us.
We'll be discussing with Alfonso andEdna today the role of public markets
or farmers' markets as they're morecolloquially known here in Australia
and the benefits they provide tocommunities and aspiring businesses.

(00:43):
Welcome to Planning Exchange to both ofyou, and thank you for joining us today.
We're thrilled to have you both, and it'snot very often that we have two guests
as part of our interview, so thank you.
Just to begin a Alfonso ranching andfarming is clearly in your blood.
You come from a very longline of farming families.
How has this shapedyour research over time?

(01:03):
I.

Alfonso Morales (01:04):
Oh my goodness.
Yes, it has indeed.
Direct farm to market work isnot very common in my family.
My family was big commodity cropproducers, ranching shipping large
numbers of cattle here and there.
But we did a lot of our own, we did alot of our own butchering of animals
and whatnot, and we always went tofarmer's markets, whether they were

(01:28):
in Mexico, whenever from the ranchin, in, on the border of Texas, Mexico
or in New Mexico where I grew up.
Now, of course, there were not verymany farmer's markets then because
grocery store retail had taken over.
But we'll come back around to thatside of the story in a little bit.

Jess Noonan (01:47):
And Edna, you work closely with Alfonso and you are the director
of the Kaufman Lab for the study anddesign of food systems and marketplaces.
Can you tell us a little bit about thisand your broader experience in this space?

Edna Ely-Ledesma (02:01):
Yes.
First of all, thank you so much forhaving me, and I'm really excited to
talk a little bit about in this spacebecause a lot of the reason for why I
am in this research world and the lineof work that I do is because I'm a
huge follower and admirer of Alfonso.
As an assistant professor, Iactually joined the university

(02:21):
having knocked on his door.
Years ago I was researching Latinomarkets, flea markets, and swap
meets along the US Mexico border.
Where I grew up and looking at the roleof markets from a civic perspective as
an urban designer, as someone that camein from an architecture background and
trying to merge that with an understandingof physical space and planning.

(02:43):
I found Alfonso's work through that,through my research and was really
excited to collaborate with him.
And one thing led to another andcollaborations led to being a mentee,
a colleague, and now co-directors.
And eventually I becamethe director of the lab.
And a lot of the work that I doreally is trying to not only elevate
the role of market to centers offood systems and food sovereignty,

(03:07):
but really from a civic perspective.
Recognizing the role thatmarkets have as democratic
spaces for community development.
And so I think that our perspectivesare quite unique in that Alfonso's
background and my background come togetherto really understand beyond the scope
of an economic place of exchange, howmarkets really contribute to community

(03:29):
development and our food systems entirely.

Peter Jewell (03:33):
This is a great topic.
Alfonso tell our listeners from Farmto faculty, what just give us a very
brief overview of how you made thattransition or that, that evolution.

Alfonso Morales (03:48):
Oh my goodness, yes, Peter.
That was a quite a thing.
So I went to a small state college in NewMexico State University, and then I worked
for a couple of years and found out thatI. Graduate school was an option, was
told why don't you go to graduate school?
And I became a graduate student and thendid more graduate training and steadily

(04:12):
demonstrated my intellectual capacity.
And then in the course of writingmy dissertation, I became part
of two very important things.
One was the Urban Family Life Projectat the University of Chicago that
was headed at the time by a guy namedBill Wilson, William Julius Wilson
and the American Bar Foundation,which is the the legal research arm

(04:35):
of the American Bar Association.
And so I found I was interested, notso much in poverty law, but in the
way that law shapes opportunities.
And how it is people circumvent thelaw or how it is that they embrace

(04:55):
the law sometimes paradoxically toachieve their household ambitions.
And so it was a, it was a meanderingpath, no question about it.
I took longer than thetypical graduate student.
And but it was also one that wasreally very fertile with a lot of
seeds were planted in my mind overthe, those years and many of them

(05:18):
thankfully have come to fruition.
And of course what's particularlyinteresting from my perspective
is how I was able to maintaina sense of the importance of.
Community of thecommunity's use of my work.
I've always been, one of the things thatI think you'll find about Edna's work as

(05:40):
well is that I'm very community oriented.
I'm a good basic researcher.
I can do good basic research, but appliedresearch is real attractive to me.
I really enjoy working directlywith people and understanding their
circumstances and how they how theycan be supported in taking advantage

(06:03):
of opportunities in front of themor ameliorating problems they have.

Jess Noonan (06:10):
So if we take this sort of back to back to basics in terms of
the importance of public and communitymarkets, can we just talk to your views
on why are they important and what roledo they play in contemporary urban life?
I.

Alfonso Morales (06:25):
Sure.
You bet folks, listeners,have you ever thought about
the roots of cosmopolitanism?
What is Cosmopolitan?
It's the universal polls.
Where does that come from?
The agora, where does that three 4,000years ago, and I've lectured about
this, done some work on the history ofmarkets and written about this history,

(06:49):
and indeed the universal person is theperson who goes to markets with their
heads up, aware of what they have toaround them to purchase if they're
interested, but also interested inthe magician over in the corner or
the, or the choir that's practicing orthe dogs, there's t-shirts I've seen

(07:13):
that I come to markets for the dogs.
And of course that's a matterof regulation because not
all markets permit animals.
Okay.
So there we circle back to law.
But my, my, my interest in thisreally has to do with kind of an
intellectual curiosity I have aboutsocial theory, which I won't rehearse,

(07:34):
but also very much how we think abouturban life and how important where
the roots of cosmopolitanism are.
And there in markets with intersectingtrade routes over thousands of miles.
And there you go.

Peter Jewell (07:49):
Edna, do you have anything to add to that?
Yeah, general overview.

Edna Ely-Ledesma (07:53):
I think in general, we come from a very similar line of
thought and I think in building onthe concept of the agora for me, and I
think for those of us that are tryingto understand markets from an urban
design perspective, it's about civicness.
And I think fundamentally, as societywe need to be incredibly comfortable
with exposure to difference.
And what market provide to society is theability to be confronted by difference,

(08:19):
to be confronted by difference without theobligation of and monetary transaction.
And that is critical to go to a placewhere you can, if you chose, so choose.
Ex spend money, pay for some kindof good or service that you're
gonna get out of that interaction.
But being able to just access a placewithout being charged, without being

(08:41):
being asked to give something up and tohave freedom and access to that space
is what keeps societies functioning.
And I know what's really critical ofwhere we are today in the 21st century
is that we're losing those spaces.
And for us doing this work is reallyabout elevating the need to make
sure that cities continue to supportspaces for that kind of interaction.

Jess Noonan (09:05):
I know this is a fairly obvious question, but I think it's
an important one to tease out justin terms of this discussion about,
the role or the difference in rolethat public markets play compared to
private retail spaces like malls orsupermarkets and that sort of thing.
So what do you think is thedifference between those two?
Is it purely the, as you say, Edna,the the charging component between

(09:29):
those two sort of spaces that, a mall,you generally will be spending money
as opposed to a farmer's market whereyou can linger I guess for a little
bit longer and enjoy the benefitsthat come from a community space.

Edna Ely-Ledesma (09:43):
I, I think we, I think in addition to that, there
is the economic filter, but there'salso the openness of it, right?
So when you, we think about we are, wehave moved to the 21st century to back to
that original understanding of civicnessand so we have more open air malls, like
malls are no longer what malls were hadoriginally been conceived in the 20th

(10:03):
century, in the seventies and sixties.
But at the same time, the ideathat there is a town center, right?
That's where markets tend to be.
Do we have a town center whereanybody from the surrounding
district could walk, bike?
This idea of multimodal accessibilitythat you could come upon a market
without even realizing that is theurbanistic essence of a market that is.

(10:28):
I think most, most pure, we see thatperhaps more in larger cities or European
cities and places in the global, north andsouth, but in places such as, in suburbia,
at least in the American context, it mightnot be as easy to stumble upon a market.
So there is nuances about, is it amarket because it's open to everybody

(10:48):
or is it a market because you can justcome upon it and not know it's there.
From a private retail perspective,I. Yeah, I think the idea of
Enclosure makes the limitationsso that market more, there's a
physical filter to accessibility,

Jess Noonan (11:04):
I think as well.
From my perspective, the differencebetween what we would call a high
street environment, which is,retail on two sides of a road.
Smaller shops, those sorts ofenvironments as opposed to a market.
The difference being that the highstreet environment has, the road has
that disconnect for the community.
You don't get that same senseof blending of people, blending

(11:28):
of uses across the public space.
And certainly that's something that isbeing pushed far more here in Australia
about this idea of creating moreconnected spaces that are not disconnected
by roads and those sorts of things.
But it's a very difficult thingto and it's obviously not always
practical in every situation.
But certainly I guess having the abilityto close off roads to create those bigger

(11:52):
public spaces for things like publicmarkets on weekends, I think is a really
good option for people to be considering.

Alfonso Morales (12:01):
If I can tag onto that, Jess, that is so absolutely.
The case.
The intentionality.
It's a matter of being intentional.
And in, in some jurisdictions,there's that intentionality can
really can really bear fruit.
Even here in the States, there areoftentimes in Denver for instance,

(12:21):
there's a couple of markets inDenver that exist on public streets
that take over the public right ofway for six to eight hours a day.
Here in Madison, of course the nathe US' largest producer only market
exists and it is a site to behold, butinteresting to the 20 to 30,000 people

(12:46):
walking around the state Capital Square.
But it's interesting to note that withinthat square there are only food producers
from Wisconsin, and that is by state law.
You cross the street and city lawand regulation obtain completely

(13:09):
different permitting processes.
Now that's one part ofthat intentionality.
Another part is, and I'd like to echo whatI think is an important point, estimate,
there are what people call third spaces.
The original book on this waswritten in the late nineties.
It actually cited my.

(13:30):
Dissertation research as an exampleof marketplaces as third places.
And that's the important thing aboutthat is I think what you're talking
about, that moment of lingeringright, Jess, that moment of relaxation
and observation and looking aroundand saying, wow, what's new here?
What haven't I seen?
Who might I run into?

(13:51):
It's that pregnant moment where you have,you're not at home, you're not at work,
you're in a third or liminal social spacewhere interesting things can happen.
They can happen everywhere, butgosh, you just don't know who you
run into when you're at the market.

Peter Jewell (14:10):
Alfonso, there's all types of different markets, and there's
a couple of points, you make thepoint that the states United States
is that experimentation because, asalways said that 50 states, you've
got 50 different experiments, andthen within each state, as you say,
there's all sorts of subsections.
So there's a huge amountof experimentation.
But you know what I find interestingabout markets, and there's all types,

(14:33):
all different types of markets as yousay, but it's the people watching.
It's the experimentation.
It's the ad hocness of it lingabout, but it's also you get exposed
to not the mainstream whatever themedia or whatever is presented.
Lots of diversity fair

Alfonso Morales (14:54):
Oh, absolutely.
Fair and accurate.
And it begs the question how didthis how did this come about?
A hundred years ago, a thousandyears ago, there were different
things operating faires as they werecalled in Europe in medieval Europe,

(15:15):
in, in the Renaissance in Europe.
They were often at the held, at thebehest of a local principality in order
to enable exchange of luxury or statusgoods, and then also for other sorts
of activity to, to take place and that,so in that situation, that's where

(15:35):
you had interaction across classes.
That was not always common, thatwas infrequent, even at best.
Then a hundred years ago you thinkabout the reasons for markets to exist
in many places here in the UnitedStates tagging onto European, uses,
markets were intentionally created inorder to help employ the underemployed,

(16:00):
employ women and handicapped.
And I'm citing here from a 1914report on the creation of Chicago's
Max, its official creation.
It formalized a market thathad been there for 50 years in
Chicago's Maxwell Street Market.
And so that what's interesting isthat social processes are happening.

(16:20):
How we anchor onto them and how it isthat government or other organizations see
all a sudden a purpose that they hadn'tforeseen and try and take advantage of it.
There's an interesting thing.
Here's an interesting thing, andthat's where regulation often gets
cobbled on to existing activitieswithout really understanding the

(16:42):
activity, which it circles backto one of Edna's opening points.
That's why we're out here shedding lighton how people organize things and trying
to make, help them understand that theway that they're organized makes sense.
Let's be careful.
But
let's advise government to becareful before they mess around

(17:03):
too much with what's going on.
And

Edna Ely-Ledesma (17:05):
I would add that the organizational structure, if we
come down even to today at least inthe context of the United States, so
the type of market that you showcaseor you highlight, like you mentioned
this cosmopolitan of market varietieswill make a significant difference.
So is the market a nonprofit?
Is the market state runis the market for profit.
And so the ethos the values, theobjectives of that organization are

(17:29):
gonna have some implications on the waythe market are run or the market or the
kind of reach the market begins to have.
And we work with all kinds of marketsbecause there is a role for each of those.
But context matters.

Jess Noonan (17:43):
So more from a broader perspective, as we start to talk about
retail hierarchy and the role thatmarkets play in that hierarchy do you
see markets, and from what you're saying,it sounds like your view on this is that
markets should be an embedded componentwithin the retail hierarchy as opposed
to probably what they currently are.

(18:05):
Certainly in Australia, which is a,an add-on or attack on to the retail
hierarchy, where whereby they mightbe something that happens, once a
month, once a fortnight, occasionallyin some areas, like my area, it's
once a week, but do you see it playinga more pivotal role in that retail
hierarchy as opposed to the tack on.

Alfonso Morales (18:26):
Absolutely.
And let me if I may, I'm,this might take a minute.
Okay.
150 years ago, most retail there weretraders that would pass through little
towns and there were some storefronts.
You had your tavern or your barmercantile, a place where you could pick
up your nails and hammers and whatnot.

(18:48):
And then there were catalogs,Sears and Roebuck and Company.
And slowly that retail landscape changed.
And what made two thingsmade an important change.
One, transportation modalitiesenabled moving food more quickly.
And so we could aggregate it, we couldprocess it, and we could move it.

(19:08):
And another thing that happened wasthat refrigeration became available.
Electricity, refrigeration and thatenabled markets fairly large terminal
markets where large amounts of productscould move into smaller retail.
And it made possible thesmaller retail itself.

(19:30):
So that's in about the 1920s orthirties in the United States.
And the, so at that point, thecensus, the US Census Bureau kept
track of RS and street vendorsas a census occupation category.
They cared about it for counting whowas employed, doing what, by 1940.

(19:54):
That was no longer needed as a censusoccupation category because people
were working in retail groceriesand in effect markets disappeared.
Farmers, the farmer's market, thestreet market, the pedler, the push
cart vendor they were vanishingfrom the American urban landscape

(20:16):
not long after that.
In 1968, in guess where, Berkeley,California in 1970, guess where?
Madison, Wisconsin.
We, you had a bunch of upper middleclass folks who remembered what a tomato
tasted like because they either workedon their parents or grandparents' place

(20:37):
or whatever it happened to be, andthey said, we wanna bring markets back.
Now, of course the detailedversion of that story is it's,
there's a lot more to it.
But to your point, Jess, that marketsdidn't have a place for 30 years or so.
Was just an interment.

(20:57):
It was just this little, it was a littlebreak in what normal life really was.
And the creation, the move frombig retail, Sears Roebuck down to
Marshalls in the us primary, secondary,tertiary storefront retail settings.
And into, through the mechanism of whatare called railroad auctions into the

(21:22):
street markets and swap meets and farmer'smarkets public markets of different kinds.
That evolution simply reinforcedthe demand for other retail spaces.
And that reinforced thedemand for fresh food.
It reinforced the demandfor accessibility.

(21:43):
You didn't have to havea car to get there.
Like you did in the suburban mall ofthe sixties, seventies and eighties.
So they hope, hopefully thatmakes sense to everybody.

Peter Jewell (21:54):
No it's a good overview.
The historical perspective.
We often lose that.
We always think of the here andnow, but it's great to look back.
Ed I was gonna ask you just about that,circling back about the, what do markets
contribute to food security and socialequity in underserved neighborhoods.
Can you talk to that?

Edna Ely-Ledesma (22:14):
Yeah.
And I think building on the previousquestion, I think that what's really
important as the role of markets in.
Sort of filling a gap forthat regional hierarchy.
I think regionalism is really important.
And so specifically thinking abouthow markets can fill gaps across
regions, that also connects backto your question about filling the

(22:35):
gap in terms of food accessibility.
In the United States, we're a countrythat has you know, great disparities
in some communities that have a lot.
And then we see the half nots.
And in those half nots often what isleft out of those, out of the access
to opportunities in cities is accessto that infrastructure, access to
mobility access to better education.

(22:58):
And in, in the context of foodis, access to healthier access
points for retail environments.
And so markets, because of theirflexibility, because of their
porosity and their temporalitythere are critical anchor points
for filling those gaps quickly.
It takes a lot of work.
I think thinking about, should marketshappen every day, that would be amazing.

(23:21):
But, just setting up the market itselfrequires infra social infrastructure.
It requires, the capacity of anorganization or a manager that can.
Set up that, that entity andmanage and run that entity.
We do a lot of work across the USwith market organizations that are
essentially trying to do, what you askis how can markets better do that work?

(23:41):
And a lot of the tools that weactually have in place are being able
to essentially stretch the benefitsthat we currently have at market.
So in the US we have a common model, whichis our double up food box, for example.
If a family maybe has access to nutrition,incentive benefits through the national
nutrition incentive, snap snap, EBTprograms in the United States if there

(24:07):
is a local run program that allows forthose benefits to be brought to a market,
and then they would say you spend $20of your national nutrition incentive
benefits, and then it gets doubled.
So that means that you have agreater possibility of accessing.
Fresh fruits and vegetablesat the market than you would
at your local retail center.

(24:28):
For us, we see those incentive programsand the work that is being run by the
market organization as critical toolsto changing access in a way that can be
organic, but it's also community driven.
In markets themselves, the food might bethere, but maybe people don't realize that
is where they can have access to that.

(24:50):
So there's also a level ofoutreach and education that
has to happen through markets.

Jess Noonan (24:55):
Probably a good segue there, Edna.
In terms of what makes a marketsuccessful, is there a correlation
between things like transport,foot traffic the dwelling density
surrounding a market, or are there otherfactors that make a market a success?

Edna Ely-Ledesma (25:14):
I think location is critical.
That's certain.
And we've looked at data aroundaccessibility in terms of, how easy can
a, an individual access the market througha personal vehicle via public transit?
Is the market actually located in aplace that actually serves a population
in need, or is it simply located therebecause they're able to make the money

(25:34):
with a higher income population group?
But it is a combination of all of those.
Alfonso can probably talk a little bitmore about our artificial intelligence
work and the work that we're pushingin trying to essentially do predictive
models that begin to say, especiallywhen we're thinking about in the 21st
century, the amount of, if naturaldisasters and events that lead to the

(25:58):
need to access food quickly, we thinkabout the role of markets as critical
pieces of infrastructure for making adifference in changing the gap within
the built environment because they'reso transient and so malleable that
they could easily be seeing as as wesaw in the pandemic markets are essen

(26:18):
essential workers markets are essential.
That was the branding that the NationalFarmer's Market Coalition in the US
was using, because yes, they are ccra,they're important civic centers, but
they're also critical to our survival.
Do you wanna talk alittle bit about the Foss?
Alfonso?

Alfonso Morales (26:36):
Yeah.
Oh my goodness.
Hi.
There's so many differentthings that are possible here.
So let me start, let me do one, one quickresponse and that is successful markets.
Are built from successful relationships.
And so those relationships fosteringpositive pro-social, interesting

(27:00):
interactions between communityand market are important and good
market management talent does that.
But market managersdon't do it in a vacuum.
They, we happen to have toolsthat create reports, the farm to
fax.org webpage that create reportsthat enable market managers.
We do the heavy lifting for them.

(27:20):
We show them how to do robust socialresearch without a lot of fuss and create
metrics and information that enable themto then report to their stakeholders about
why their stakeholders made the smartinvestment in moving that market forward.
Now the corollary to that isthat it's not just academics.

(27:41):
Jurisdictions have to decide to put some.
So to invest in this and different citiesaround the US and actually elsewhere,
Barcelona, Spain is a fantastic example.
The 27 big public markets inas part of a city collective.
New York City has the green marketsystem of 50 farmer's markets

(28:03):
as well as many other markets.
The city of Chicago intentionallyhas 24 markets in low income places.
And our contribution to that was througha lot of the work we did here in central
Wisconsin, it made the state rethink oneof their roles and add a role to, to be a
food access farmer's market coordinatingperson who we, who Edna was on the phone

(28:26):
with yesterday, I guess Kelly Hammond.
So the professional roles are superimportant in a successful market.
That's that organizationalinstitutional scaffolding.
Then now the supply of food, of healthyfood isn't, is both rural and urban.
There are hungry folkseverywhere and, pardon me.

(28:48):
And so the supply of food for those indemand in rural or urban places can be
met with markets and frequently is, andintentionally so through these in the US
in anyways, through these double dollarsprograms or other incentive programs.
And those have a variety of waysto be advertised and people take

(29:12):
advantage of 'em in a variety of ways.
The I think it's important whenwe think about public health and
food security, that we also thinkabout farmer health and productive
lands, productive landscapes, and sohealthy soil helps make healthy food.
And so when we can link acrossthat supply chain from production,

(29:35):
from soils all the way through toconsumers, we're gonna be enhancing
health in a lot of different ways.
Biodynamically, economically, socially.
Now, I don't know.
At the risk of talkingtoo long, let's see.
Jess, if you wanna tagonto this, you repeat.
We do have this new tool that we'redeveloping that will enable population

(29:59):
predictions of food insecurity andways to, and so shall I address that?

Peter Jewell (30:07):
Yes.
Yes.
We we might, we will, we'll getonto that and we'll have links on
our webpage to all the tools thatyou're mentioning and all your work.
I, I wanted to ask just a more sortof macro question before we get into
the tools and things, and that is Iwas at the South Melbourne market,
which is in a very affluent part in thecapital city, and it's got a fantastic

(30:29):
vibe and it's the hustle and bustle.
Tourists are there, people are there.
And I was thinking, thisis such a good experience.
What about the new estates, the newcommunities that are being built on the
outer fringe and can, is there planningfor those new areas to allow for space in

(30:50):
the master plans for community markets?
Now, can, is that something that you, I.
Encourage work on that transportingor allowing in the whole planning
of new estates that there is aspace that can be used for that.
Because a lot of the space in newestates is controlled over to you.

(31:13):
I can add

Edna Ely-Ledesma (31:14):
a little bit.
I'll just say in the context of my,this weekend I was just actually
doing a market tour to marketin Sonoma County in California.
And I think thinking about.
Our, within the US context,often we are dealing with
infrastructure that is already built.
We're not building more, but we'rethinking about infill in, in, in

(31:35):
terms of how to make sure that you'reat a place that has critical mass.
And so the, those markets, whilethe ideal model would be we're
gonna plan a new community, yes,let's ensure that community has a
town center or some kind of civiccenter or a place where that market
might be planned and pre-programmed.

(31:55):
But the reality is we're oftenadding the market, after the fact.
And it markets as Jess was describing,they happen on a high street, on a main
street they might happen in a parking lotin Sonoma we were talking about bringing
a market back to the old fairgroundswhere they would have, that annual.
The annual events and communityevents for the county.

(32:16):
And so it is really more aboutrecognizing the role that the market
plays and then where is there openspace or opportunity, whether it's a
parking lot or an actual town centerwhere that can begin to happen.
Even if you think about the nuancesof the market, it would be, then
once you have a locality, whatwould be the actual spatial I.

(32:39):
Layout that would best suitthat particular location.
And the market manager plays a huge role.
We had a conversation this weekendwith one of the managers who she was
on year three and she said, this isyear three and for year three, I'm
gonna reorient the market to do X, Y, Zbecause I'm more interested in how the
periphery can keep people, in this plaza.

(32:59):
Whereas the years before, she wastrying more of a linear model.
And I think that thinking aboutnot a missed opportunity, as long
as you have open space, as long asyou have good partners, so you're
gonna be, setting up a marketacross the street from other retail.
Is that retail gonna be comfortablewith the idea of competition?
We know competition isactually a good thing.
So having people there, thefoot traffic is gonna bring

(33:22):
people to your business as well.
So it's about the sort of thecommon understanding that,
the more we have, the better.
And so yes, let's design to integratemarkets into new cities, but
markets can really happen anywhere.

Jess Noonan (33:36):
I think one of the trends that we're seeing here, particularly where
I'm located as well, is that markets areinvariably being set up in public school
grounds and that sort of thing because,these are public spaces and I'm talking
about state government owned land here.
So not private schools,but public schools.

(33:56):
It's public land that's ordinarilycordoned off after hours for
security safety reasons, presumably.
But, there's no real reason whythat land should be, I. Closed
off to the public at all times.
It should be open and I quite like theidea of using those sorts of spaces for
public markets because it's invitingthe community back into those spaces.

(34:19):
And I think the benefit thatit provides is that generally
they're very well located.
They're known to the community,therefore, you are attracting really.
All walks of life.
But you've also got access to thing.
And for context, I've got two youngchildren, but you've also got access
to playgrounds within the market space.
So it's all very integrated.

(34:40):
It creates a really inclusiveenvironment in that sense.
And it's fenced off so I can keepmy children somewhat contained,
which is also very helpful.
But, so I just think whilst I, I totallyagree, Pete, that, our greenfield spaces
in particular should be adaptable.
They should be designed toaccommodate these spaces.

(35:02):
And I think for the most part, that ispart of the decision making processes
when designing those spaces these days.
But I also think we can look morebroadly to things like schools.
There's a bunch of other publicinfrastructure that I think we can be
utilizing to set up more farmer's markets.

Alfonso Morales (35:21):
Can I tag back, tag onto that?
Okay.
I tell you what, thisis absolutely accurate.
And the reason why is themulti-functionality of markets and
that multi-functionality and thatfungibility, that ability to conform
to existing uses is very important.
However, I think Pete, it's importantto also point out that the new places

(35:45):
need to be thought of in planning terms.
Now, my articles on zoning practiceon markets point some of this out,
as does the trend in the US for thelast 20 years of food system planning.
So town planning food has been astranger to town planners all over
the world, and only in the last fewdecades has this become very salient

(36:09):
again, just as it was 120 years ago.
Accommodating immigrants,employing people job skills
accommodate, acculturating folks.
So there was a variety of good reasonsfor them a hundred and plus years ago
in the US anyways, and likewise today.
However, to your point, if they're noton the radar for your town planning

(36:34):
group or the regional planners,then we're gonna be in trouble.
There are some excellent examplesof both city as well as regional
plants that incorporate foodexplicitly in its various guises.
In turn in, in the, across these variouspractices, including markets something
Jess to tag onto our lab is fortunateto host the school garden network.

(37:00):
Can you imagine that schoolhosting a market and having
a garden at the same time?
What a wonderful opportunity forthe students to demonstrate the
science that they're learning, right?
As well as the maybe eventhey'll sell a little groceries,

Jess Noonan (37:17):
depending.
Yeah.
That was gonna be my next kind of questionto you is what are the opportunities
that it does present from a, and maybeside hustle's not the correct word if
we're talking about young children, but,opportunities for things like the lemonade
stand or the 10-year-old child that's.

(37:38):
Violin prodigy getting up andperforming with the violin.
There are all of those opportunitiesthat I think come from a more traditional
type farmer's market as opposed to, whatyou were talking about before, Pete,
like the South Melbourne market whichis a far more structured and formalized

Peter Jewell (37:54):
market.
Jess, I was at the Queenscliffmarket last weekend and I was
speaking to the cordial seller.
He makes cordial specialtycordials and Edna.
Alfonso, I love the hustle.
I love that entrepreneurial spirit.
Can you talk to how that helps alot of a lot of people may be not
from affluent backgrounds, howthey can get into the business?

Alfonso Morales (38:17):
Wow, that's a great question, Pete.
I'm looking forward to Edna becausemy understanding of this is similar
to hers, but I. Older, so my my, mybest example was when I was a vendor
at Chicago's Maxwell Street Market.
I was not an affluent graduate student.
And I had a girlfriend at Stanford.

(38:38):
I was a student at Northwestern,she was at Stanford, and we
committed to seeing each other.
And so every three weeks I had enoughmoney from selling stuff at the
market that I flew to San Francisco.
Okay.
So that's saying nothing because somany of the folks I worked with, so
many of the families for women inimmigrant households to pick up some

(39:00):
autonomy from having their own incomefrom households working together to
go from the market into storefronts.
There are folks in Chicago thatI can take you to right now.
Started at Maxwell Street Marketimmigrants African, central American,
Mexican u us African Americans.

(39:23):
There, there were there so many folks,and culturally, oh my goodness, Carl
Sandberg's poetry the Chicago Blueswere born at Maxwell Street Market.
The variety of ways of experiencingsocioeconomic mobility are as many as the

(39:45):
kinds of activities that can happen ina multifunctional place like a market.
Now you're gonna get to hearabout why I was so excited when
Edna decided to join our faculty.

Edna Ely-Ledesma (39:58):
And I'll say, spoiler alert, he married that girl.

Peter Jewell (40:00):
Oh the

Edna Ely-Ledesma (40:01):
thank the market

Peter Jewell (40:01):
that, that's one of the So romantic, Jess.
So that's what we wanton planning exchange.
We love those Don stories.
Don't

Jess Noonan (40:08):
get many romantic love stories.
This is nice.
Oh, come

Peter Jewell (40:09):
on Jess.
This love is every, we want, wewanna promote love on this show.
But anyway, and please tell usabout that low entry opportunity.
Low entry

Edna Ely-Ledesma (40:18):
point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, I thinkthat in the context of.
Trying to start a business.
Yes.
The entrepreneurial spirit is animportant element to accessing and
opening and starting a business ina place where you're paying a lower
fee than you would in a storefront.
Often vendors, they have other jobs.

(40:39):
They have their typical nine to five,but they're trying something new.
And so the idea of piloting, testing andgetting this off the ground so much of
our economy today, it's the gig economy.
Even I, we, and I see it in our students.
We have students that have.
Three, four jobs.
I'm like, how do you do this?
There are so many facets of our livesthat are incredibly complicated,

(41:02):
and that includes like thebuilding of your professionalism.
It, whether you're in an academicinstitution or whether you're out,
at a market trying to figure out youridentity and your place in the world,
the markets allow for people to be ableto test those ideas and pilot them.
And I think, in, in my earlier work whenI was doing my dissertation and looking

(41:22):
at Latino markets, for me that was animportant attraction to elevating the
voice of the immigrant community becausefor so many of these immigrants that were
coming to the us, the markets were animportant starting point for survival.
An important starting point for being ableto have that secondary income, especially
for women to be able to help their.

(41:44):
Their partner or to support their family.
And then also I think one particularaspect that we don't talk about
often in our work is also thinkingabout our aging population.
For, from a vendor perspective, elderlyvendors are doing this because they
might be on a fixed income, but manyof them, they're also doing this

(42:05):
because not only are they tryingto add to their their economic.
Pockets, but they're also doingthis because this is where they
get access to social capital.
This is where they go everyweekend to be able to maintain
relationships, to see society.
And so that, to me, thatentrepreneurial spirit of
survival is also really critical.

(42:26):
Thinking about how markets supportthe most marginalized is why markets
matter because they help, thecommunities that are trying to survive,
but also those that are trying tostill, hold onto a place in society.
And often those are the elderly.

Jess Noonan (42:42):
And I think, adding onto that as well is the importance
of social connection for thosemarginalized communities or those
vulnerable communities, I should say.
And even I think the benefitsthat come from, small, a small
amount of movement, walking.
A hundred meters down the road, perhapsfrom where they live, to their local shop,
or sorry, to their local farmer's marketas opposed to driving up to the shop.

(43:05):
You can't underestimate thebenefit that comes from those
small actions and small movements.

Alfonso Morales (43:12):
That's, it's so true.
And those, so those small movementsrepeated regularly aggregate
into intergenerational mobility.
To just tag onto this, so many of thevendors that I worked with early in my
career worked not because they wantedto buy a Mercedes, they worked so that

(43:39):
they would have their children in abetter school, in a private school,
maybe in Chicago, where they were prettyaffordable, a Catholic school versus
public schools that were relativelyspeaking pretty mu pretty rough.
In many of the neighborhoodsthat they lived in.
And so that intergenerational mobility.
I remember when I moved here toMadison, one of the first people

(44:03):
I came across was the daughterof a vendor I knew in Chicago.
She had done her PhD in AgEconomics and was working for
Oscar Meyer here in Madison.
She was a vendor herself sellingdolls at Maxwell Street Market in
the, and she looked at me, she was 12.

(44:25):
Right?
And I couldn't believe it.
I said, oh my gosh, Guadalupe.
Wow.
And, but that is not the exception.
That is not at all an exceptionalstory among these folks.
These, the, it just.
Reminds us that populating the wholeecology of retail space, just to

(44:47):
your point, populating the wholeecology of retail opportunities will
enable so many more other peopleto experiment and oftentimes find
success and intergenerational success.

Jess Noonan (45:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's very important.
Now we touched really briefly before onsome of the tools and the software that
you've developed through your research.
So I'm conscious we've covered a lot here,but we probably need to talk a little bit
about what you have actually come up with.
'cause I think it's gonna be reallybeneficial for our listeners.
Edna, is that your area?

Edna Ely-Ledesma (45:22):
I can, yeah, I can give a the sort of the overview of how this,
this work began and it was operationalizedand it was really the work of Alfonso.
And I've carried it on, and I think I'veseen in the last five years, I've had
the privilege of elevating the work.
Un unfortunately because of thepandemic, a lot of the work that
we have done has really been at theforefront of trying to remediate

(45:45):
gaps in equity within food systems.
And it we've had thehonor to do that work.
But the sort of the primary driverof what we do within the Kaufman
Lab is we operationalize a tool,which is called Farm to Fax.
And Farm to fax is essentially what I liketo describe as a farmer's market census.
It was developed through A-U-S-D-AAFRI grant to help markets be able

(46:07):
to quantify the economic, social, andenvironmental impact of their work.
If a market applies to federalfunding in the United States to say,
we're gonna be developing X, y, Zprogramming, the federal government
requires them to be able to.
Operationalize and quantify that impact.
And so the tools that were developedthrough that Africa grant essentially

(46:29):
quantify all of the indicators thatUSDA is asking markets to say, Hey,
you did this particular program, younow demonstrate, how many more vendors
you have, how many more dollars arecoming into the market, the type
and variety of products that arebeing sold, et cetera, et cetera.
And looking at themultiplying effect of that.
Through a number of tools such asvendor applications customer surveys,

(46:51):
customer counts, and the sort of thelist of tools that we use are expansive.
We have grown the toolover the last 10 years.
It started in 20 19, 20 14, and thelast 10 years, the tool has expanded.
We recently released a 2.0 version andthe tool has evolved to support different
needs of markets in the last three years.

(47:12):
We also developed an ecosystemservices tool that begins to look
at how to quantify the environmentalimpact of agricultural practices
for small scale agriculture.
At the core of what we do is we offertools for markets to be empowered to
make decisions for themselves, makedecisions that help the government make

(47:33):
decisions about their role in society.
But the tool itself, for us,the most important aspect of
it, it's about storytelling.
It's, can you tell a story ofimpact by simply documenting
what you are already doing?
And in addition to that, capture whythis market matters to your community.

(47:54):
And for us, that's so important becausethese stories of the markets often
get undertold and under documented.
So the tools that we offerhelp them tell that story.

Alfonso Morales (48:05):
If I may, real briefly, Edna and I were having lunch with a
colleague a couple of months ago, andanother academic here on campus who's
relatively new to research in this field.
And he said.
Guess what I think.
Do you know what the mainreason people go to markets?
Ed and I looked at each other to have fun.

(48:26):
He said, how did you know?
And we said of course, the decisionsupport system tells, provides
important decision making information.
However, the stories that we tell,that we can tell the, through the
various modalities that we have totell them to convey the experience.
Oh my goodness.
There's no substitute for it.

Peter Jewell (48:49):
It sounds like it's leading edge software and allows capture
of data about, this whole, I won'tcall it an industry, but this sector.
And so you mentioned Ed and I just,aside from my being vacant but who is,
how easy is it to use and who uses it?

Edna Ely-Ledesma (49:13):
I personally think it's quite easy, but you're
asking the product developer.
But I think it is, and I think inconversations, what we love about
the tool is actually co-developedwith market managers and farmers and
market managers as they use a tool.
They come to us with input on howto improve the user experience.
That's where 2.0 came to be.
So the tool is offered in multiplelanguages to English and Spanish.

(49:37):
It also and for in Wisconsin we have alarge monk farmer population as well.
And so we, we offer thetool in Mong as well.
And the tool is.
We train the market managers, oftenmarket managers wear lots of hats.
So the market managers usually recruiteither a volunteer crew or they have
staff that would do the surveys.

(49:57):
And we have methodology around whenthe surveys would need to happen.
But we do that training, we havea YouTube channel that they have
access to and can reference.
And then, we offer member services aswell in terms of sort of customer support.
But they do the work on the ground thatwe apply a citizen scientist approach
that, they're the principal investigativeinvestigators of their research.

(50:20):
We're just here to help themfrom a technical perspective to
get that work off the ground.

Alfonso Morales (50:28):
And if I might, I'll just tag on this is also operating
on multiple scales and time horizons.
Periodicities.
So from a town planning perspective,the local market's important to that
neighborhood, but the system of marketsthat might be supported by a nonprofit
organization or by a city that, thatsystem of markets, our tool enables the

(50:52):
them to look at all the markets at once.
And then if the province, if New SouthWales says, okay, we wanna look at all
the markets in all of New South we can,our tool enables that to happen as well.
So the, and then over time, and sofrom a scientific perspective, this is
called a longitudinal panel database.

(51:13):
And in the social sciences,that's the gold standard.

Peter Jewell (51:18):
It's keeping records and viewing it over time and comparing
places that, that, that sounds great.
We thank Victorian PlanningReports, our very first supporter.
If you want the A to Z of planningdecisions in Victoria and excellent
editorials, please get yourselfa subscription to the VPRs.
Details on our website.

(51:39):
We would like to thank Elison Properties,a terrific sponsor of the podcast,
great people, great properties.
Details on our website.
And what are you, what's the next thing?
Can you tease our listeners abit with what's on the horizon?

Alfonso Morales (51:53):
Yeah, sure thing.
I'm excited to be the lab, so I'mthe principal investigator of a
National Science Foundation, AICI grant, artificial Intelligence,
cyber Infrastructure Award.
It's called Icicle and I won'ttell you the name of the acronym.
Oh, wow.
What the heck.
Intelligence, cyber infrastructure incomputational learning environments.

(52:16):
And our use cases, mouthful,there's a mouthful for you.
Our use cases are Smart Food Sheds,digital Agriculture and Wildlife Ecology.
And voila, the F two F platformtouches all three of those because
ecosystem services, riparian areasthat farmers preserve to create
pollinator habitats, that's important.

(52:39):
So that as part of that institute,the F two F data, our Farm to Fax
data has helped create a privacypreserving sandbox that will enable
folks to keep private their data,but bring it into relationship with
other data, public data or other data.
And I'm excited about that, but whatI was happy about that obviously,

(53:03):
but I became even happier whenever wehad the opportunity to think about.
A very, the two here,let me say it this way.
The Wisconsin team that's on this grant isworking on food systems at three levels,
at the macro level with national foodchains at the regional level, working

(53:27):
with Native Nations, indigenouscommunities and private farm and private
food hubs and nonprofit organizationsto ensure regional food security.
And then at the local level, thisis where I really hope that we
would be able to create something.
And we have, and on our toolright now it's called the feast.

(53:50):
Is this tool, it's the Food EquityAccess Simulation Technology.
And what it is an agent-based modelthat enables a decision maker, it's
another decision support system.
It enables a decision maker likePete's the decision maker in a
nonprofit food related organization.
And he wants to know theconsequences of closing a grocery

(54:13):
store in that jurisdiction.
So he goes to the model he runs themodel and looks at the food scores
and the food access scores foreverybody in the census database.
And then he closes the grocery storeand he sees what happens with the
local to low food access peopleversus high food access people.

(54:35):
Or Pete says I have a mobile market.
I have outfit, a school bus withas a mobile market to take food.
What would be the consequences ofme locating it in this jurisdiction
three days a week at this address?
At this exact address.
And so you set that up in there.
Run the model, and there we go.

(54:56):
Now, the former you can doright now for in Columbus, Ohio,
because that's the home of Icicle.
So it's not set up for Madison, but thelatter part we're working on this summer.
So the functionality of this,again, it comes from a stakeholder
group of interested professionalsin Wisconsin, Virginia, and Ohio.

(55:18):
And they're informing us of the featuresthat they want and like Farm to Fax.
This will be a cost recovery service.
We will charge the amount ofmoney it takes to create an
instance for a particular place.
Unlike Farm To Facts, whichhas a Canadian version, farm to
Facts, has a Canadian version.
The Feast does not yet have a non-USversion, and that will take out

(55:43):
some work, but we're working on it.
Honestly, because one of our partnersin this work is the big international
geospatial company, Esri, which stands forEnvironmental science Research Institute.
So it's a business that doesgeographic information systems.
However, they're really at the, their, theheart of the company is applied research.

Edna Ely-Ledesma (56:08):
And I was just gonna say, I would be remiss if we
didn't mention S3 'cause they'vebeen an, a critical partner in our
brainstorming about what's next.
And I think in the context of phar tofacts, we, and our combination of thinking
about you not only the power of a market,but also thinking about spatial analysis
is bringing, from a planning perspective,bringing the power of spatial analysis

(56:29):
to the farm to facts toolkit so thatmarket managers can begin to see the
role, not only the impact of the datathey're collecting for that particular
spot, but also as it relates to context.
So that's stay tuned.
That'll be next.

Alfonso Morales (56:43):
We're working.

Peter Jewell (56:45):
It sounds like you're the skunk works of public market tools.
You know what the skunkworks were, oh, sorry.
They were the sort of, that's the deepthinking tech places that come up with
all these new ideas, the skunk works.
Because, 'cause the people inthere, they're all nerds and they
never wash and things like that.
That's why they got that name.
So I'm not suggestingyou are like that at all.

(57:07):
We're pretty stinky over here, Pete.
No.
Don't worry about it, buddy.
I rode

Alfonso Morales (57:10):
my bike in today, so I'm not, I'm sweaty.

Peter Jewell (57:14):
Now we've come to Culture Corner or Podcast Extra, something that
you've watched, experienced, done, seen.
It could be off topic that mightbe of interest to our listeners.
Do you wanna go first, Edna?

Edna Ely-Ledesma (57:29):
I actually, I read the question and laughed because,
there, there are a couple of ways Icould take this, but I would, where I
will go is very applicable to today.
I recently watched Conclave, themovie and and I sold Alfonso as both
of us being practicing Catholics andI'm Hope that's okay to say on air.
It's

Peter Jewell (57:49):
perfectly fine.
We're very pro church.
I'll speak for myself Jess.
Anyway.

Edna Ely-Ledesma (57:54):
Just, just in terms of the phenomena of what, how
that movie was able to capture the.
The context and the complexity ofpower and infrastructure and in
the Catholic society was I thoughtbeautiful, beautifully done.
And then very applicable to what thenthe whole world's fascination around
the new Pope which was elected today.

(58:16):
So I was just about to say what timing.
I just saw that,

Jess Noonan (58:20):
yeah.
Very exciting.

Peter Jewell (58:23):
And Alfonso have you got something for our listeners?

Alfonso Morales (58:26):
Yeah, I think so.
Again, like Edna, my mind wentto a lot of different directions
when you asked that question.
That the, I think that the one that'smost present to me is I'm about 15 books
into a series by a British author abouta a medieval it's, they're mysteries
about a medieval monk named cad.

(58:50):
And so what's fascinating about itis that frequently an actor in the
novels is the marketplace is St.
Peter's Fair.
That happens four days a yearand all the different commerce.
I had no idea when I started thebooks that would be the case.

(59:10):
But it's interesting the role ofphysical places in people's lives
and really how consistent thatmarkets have been over the centuries.
I had a PhD student, I've had PhDstudents from different countries and
the, and one who studied markets with mefrom was from Indonesia and I'm trying

(59:32):
to remember, Babo, Indonesia, and herdissertation was on markets in Indonesia.
And I tell you what, youwould just be familiar.
If you read your dissertation,you would say, how sensible is the
history of these in this culture?
How sensible, how what what a tight fitthe marketplace had in the various other

(59:54):
social institutions that it was part of.
So Pete, Jess, it's been a real pleasure.
Ah you haven't, you haven't heard?

Peter Jewell (01:00:04):
No.
We'll get to the end, but we've, we alwayslook forward to Jess's podcast extra.

Alfonso Morales (01:00:10):
Shoot.
Sorry

Peter Jewell (01:00:10):
about

Alfonso Morales (01:00:10):
that.

Jess Noonan (01:00:11):
I'm kicking myself 'cause I think it was probably six, 12 months or
so ago, I actually recommended my localfarmer's market as my podcast extra.
So I am a bit annoyed that I'veused up the most applicable one
that I could have used today.
My one today is actually aloneAustralia on SBS, which I'm sure
you guys are aware of 'cause itwas an American show originally.

(01:00:32):
So I think they're at day 30or thereabouts at the moment.
And I don't know it's a very goodway to just completely zone out.
Back to basics and I'm just inawe of these people that have
managed to survive this long.
And we were laughing my husband andI last night that I don't think.

(01:00:53):
He in particular, I said,would not last 12 hours.

Peter Jewell (01:00:58):
Jess, that's not the way you speak to your husband, Alfonso.
This, I keep trying to educate her thatthis guy guys have a certain pride,
but Jess doesn't understand these.

Jess Noonan (01:01:07):
I reckon I could last about two days, may maybe
three, I reckon I'd make.
But yeah, he wouldn't last 12 hours.
So we are just in awe of these peoplethat are doing the most amazing things.
What about you, Pete?

Peter Jewell (01:01:20):
J Jess, I love everything Japan, and I particularly
love everything Japanese rail andthere's a new Netflix program.
I don't like Netflix that much,but I do like bullet train
explosion, which is a thrill.
I set on the hin canen, the bullet train.
It's incredible.
So you've been wonderful guestsand we could talk for hours.

(01:01:42):
And thank you for enlighteningus about this subject.
Jess, any, anything finally tosay to our wonderful guests?

Jess Noonan (01:01:48):
It's been an excellent discussion and I think we, we spoke about
at the start of this that we probablywouldn't get through even a quarter of
what we thought we might because we'd gooff on a tangent, which is what we did.
But I think it's been a really fruitfuldiscussion and certainly one that will
be relevant to a lot of our listeners.
So thank you very much for your timeand expertise and passion on the topic.

Peter Jewell (01:02:08):
A and Alfonso, have you ever come to our our country?
I know it's a long way from the States,but you would be great to catch up.

Alfonso Morales (01:02:15):
Oh, it would be delight.
I would be so delighted.
I'm sure.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you both so much.
This has really been a pleasant experienceand I look forward to sharing the podcast
with our colleagues here in the States.
I'm sure the folks will be interested.
Thank you.

Jess Noonan (01:02:32):
Wonderful.
Thanks very much.
Thanks for listening.
If you would like to hear more of ourpodcasts, hit the follow button on Spotify
or the like button on SoundCloud orthe subscribe button in Apple podcasts.
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or recently released episodes.
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