The Tartu open market is quiet in early October. The summer berry season has ended and most garden produce is running out. Several vendors say the market was noticeably less busy this summer compared with previous years. According to the owner of Wiira Farm, which has been growing garden produce for 14 years, the number of visitors has clearly declined over time. This year, for the first time, Wiira Farm had to take its blueberries to sell at a Tallinn market because there weren't enough buyers in Tartu.

"Each year, there are fewer people. For older folks, the market used to be the main place to go for fresh produce. Now there are so many big supermarket chains and things are often cheaper there — you can buy the same products. Younger people just go to the store instead," said Wiira Farm's owner, Erle Hermann.

Many other Estonian markets are also seeing fewer visitors and the number of vendors is shrinking. At the Jõgeva open market, there were 25–30 sellers ten years ago, but only three remain today, according to market manager Jaano Terras. In Tartu, vendor numbers have dropped by 30 percent. Across several open markets, traders are increasingly moving from market squares to shopping centers.

"When someone decides to leave for another location, that's a concern we must pay close attention to. Right now, more vendors are heading toward shopping centers, where parking lots and entrances are turning into new selling spots," said Ivo Tombak, head of management and development at the Tartu Market.

Tombak noted that the growing popularity of direct farm-to-consumer sales also means fewer sellers and buyers at traditional markets. Siim Võõbus, owner of Põllult Koju ("From Field to Home"), said that his farm-to-door delivery service has grown slightly every year in its 14 years of operation. Tombak added that the decline in vendor numbers is also linked to the broader challenges in agriculture.

"When the harvest is smaller, there's less to sell. For example, strawberry growers had fewer sales days this year simply because there was less crop. The number of growers has also slightly decreased, but that's largely due to the general state of agriculture," said Tombak.

Some farmers are skipping the markets altogether, preferring to sell their produce through middlemen. According to Tombak, the share of resellers is growing — and three-quarters of the open market's goods now come from intermediaries.

"Four years ago, when the strawberry season was good and the weather was on our side, the Tartu market was so full of sellers that you could barely find an empty spot. This summer, after four years of poor harvests, I was selling alone in the middle of the week. By the weekend, one more farm and one private seller from Põlva County joined. The rest were all resellers," Hermann said.

To sell most of their harvest at once and cut the costs of selling directly, Lätte Farm, which has grown strawberries for 25 years, decided to sell through a reseller. However, their latest experience with reseller Diana Moro at the Tartu Market has been worrying.

"There's a reseller at the Tartu Market whose selling practices damage the reputation of farms. Either the strawberries are mixed with foreign ones or left to mold and ferment — but still sold. She buys such large quantities that she can't move them all and they start to spoil," said Lätte Farm's owner, Merili Varrik.

"In the mornings, Latvian trucks park outside the market. Vendors buy their produce cheaply there, bring it in to sell and we have to compete with that. In Latvia, the value-added tax on domestic farm products is only 5 percent, so it creates a big price gap for us," Hermann said.

In a written response, Diana Moro said her operations are entirely legal and that competing businesses are merely speculating. She said that no problems had been found in her documentation or in product samples.

Complaints about resellers and the origins of their goods have reached both the Tartu city government and the market, but according to Tombak, no specific names have been mentioned. Still, he said, such suspicions harm the market's reputation and could be one reason fewer people are coming to sell and shop. So far, the market has not formally addressed the issue due to a lack of a clear feedback process.

"We definitely have a gap in our internal processes. Feedback procedures are not well regulated. In the end, we can see where the problem lies. When needed, we've had cases where we've asked a seller to leave the market grounds along with their goods," said Tombak.

While Jõgeva Market's management plans to close the market next season, the Tartu Market is developing a feedback system to better understand the concerns of both customers and sellers — and then address them. Farmers from Vasula, Wiira and Lätte farms said the market should start by designating separate areas for resellers and for farms selling their own produce. The Tartu city government has also asked the market's management to review its rental policies for vendor spaces and take all complaints seriously.

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