Laura Avery was the longtime supervisor of the Farmers Markets, serving from 1982 through 2018. Originally from Cleveland, Avery had recently moved to Santa Monica with two young children when she discovered the fledgling Wednesday market, which had opened only the year before. She applied for the job of running it and was hired in 1982, when the market had just 23 farmers. Over the next 36 years, she helped expand the program into four weekly markets drawing roughly 130 farmers and thousands of shoppers, while maintaining a strong emphasis on certified growers selling what they themselves produced.

Avery became particularly influential in building relationships between farmers and Southern California chefs. As chefs such as Nancy Silverton and others began shopping the Wednesday market, Avery encouraged direct relationships that allowed growers to introduce unusual varieties and chefs to request specialty crops, helping make the market an important center of Los Angeles’ farm-to-table movement. She also promoted food-access and school-education programs and became a familiar public voice through her regular farmers-market reports on KCRW’s Good Food. When Avery retired at the end of 2018, the Los Angeles Times credited her with helping give the Santa Monica Farmers Market its identity and with putting farmers, rather than commercial vendors, at the center of the market.

Laura Avery

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