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Author Archives: Darlene Wolnik
Becoming the Farmers Market Support Program
Darlene Wolnik April 5, 2021One of the chief goals of the FMC Strategic Plan that our stakeholders prioritized is for FMC to Support FM Operators/Networks in Capacity-Building.* Another is to become an active anti-racist organization and ally. As a result of working towards these two priorities, we’ve redesigned what was previously called our Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) Program…
Farmers Markets Respond to COVID-19 — Best Practices, Examples, and Resources
Darlene Wolnik March 18, 2020As concerns about the spread of COVID-19 grow, farmers market operators are wondering how best to respond. Markets are grappling with their role as public gatherings that are vital to food access for consumers and the livelihoods of farmers. In response, market operators are developing communications, preparing contingency plans, and in some regions, beginning to…
Maine Event
Darlene Wolnik January 28, 2020by Darlene Wolnik, Training and Technical Assistance Director I just got back from a wonderful week in Maine for the Maine Federation of Farmers Market (MFFM) Convention held during the Maine Ag Trades Show. I was able to attend courtesy of Maine’s Director of Agricultural Resource Development at the Department of Agriculture Conservation and…
Training and Technical Assistance 2020
Darlene Wolnik January 14, 2020In November of 2019, I accepted the brand-new position of Training and Technical Assistance Director at FMC, and in December, I began to build the T&TA team. With this evolution, FMC can offer sustained new training programs for market operators and more fully support existing training programs, seek and create additional desperately needed resources and…
Summit Debrief
Darlene Wolnik November 1, 2019The 2nd annual National Direct Agricultural Marketing Summit took place October 7-9, 2019 in Rosemont, Illinois. FMC hosted pre-Summit activities, including a state & network leader meeting, an emerging issues panel, and discussion groups on markets training and technical assistance needs. For the second year, Farmers Market Coalition gave its all for the Summit, including bringing the entire FMC…
TED Talk: Why You Should Shop At Your Local Farmers Market
Darlene Wolnik October 1, 2019TED Speaker Mohammad Modarres developed the first-ever Zabihah Halal and Glatt Kosher “Interfaith Meat” to make faith-based foods more accessible. Here he talks about one solution to the farmer crisis. (transcript)00:13: It’s been about a decade since the last financial crisis, yet this industry has never been bigger. Legislation that was meant to better regulate its largest…
Metrics/Evaluation 2.0, Part One
Darlene Wolnik August 27, 2019An update from FMC Senior Advisor Darlene Wolnik on the ongoing development of its Metrics product and on FMC’s work in providing overall evaluation and technical assistance to markets and networks. Background: FMC and evaluation Across the last decade, the increased use of data by market organizations to make decisions and to enlist new…
Metrics/Evaluation 2.0, Part Two
Darlene Wolnik August 26, 2019An update from FMC Senior Advisor Darlene Wolnik on the ongoing development of its Metrics product and on FMC’s work in providing overall evaluation and technical assistance to markets and networks. Part Two: Market Needs To illustrate the spectrum of different market needs in terms of evaluation, here is an outline of some market organizational…
Metrics/Evaluation 2.0, Part Three
Darlene WolnikAn update from FMC Senior Advisor Darlene Wolnik on the ongoing development of its Metrics product and on FMC’s work in providing overall evaluation and technical assistance to markets and networks. How can networks help markets? Overall, we find that networks have to restrain from prescribing all of the data points that markets should be…
Metrics/Evaluation 2.0, Part Four
Darlene WolnikAn update from FMC Senior Advisor Darlene Wolnik on the ongoing development of its Metrics product and on FMC’s work in providing overall evaluation and technical assistance to markets and networks. Next Steps for FMC Inside Metrics, we have continued to work on solutions for seamless data uploads, more market-level and project-level functionality for markets…
