FMPP Report: Promoting Farmers Market Impacts

Over a three-year period, the project Promoting Farmers Markets Impacts: Building Local and State Level Capacity for Data helped increase the capacity of five state farmers market associations to develop data-driven National Farmers Market Week promotion campaigns with the goal of improving attendance at markets in these states and to help create and test a new set of standardized data collection tools and resources to aid markets in building or updating market-level evaluation plans. Through this project, FMC built a new comprehensive resource library and website centered on farmers market evaluation which includes a “quick start” market evaluation tool; step-by-step guides to plan, collect, track, analyze, and share data related to markets; and a bank of survey questions and associated data collection tools. In the future, FMC hopes to use these tools to collect additional market data at the national level which will be accessible to all stakeholders (including market operators, farmers, ranchers, and consumers), enabling the sector to better respond to future challenges and opportunities. Coupled with technical assistance and evaluation training, tool/software comparisons, public data, and enhancements to FMC’s National Farmers Market Week (NFMW) Toolkit, FMC is helping market operators and state associations promote markets to stakeholders and increase shopper and vendor participation.

Read a summary of the 2021 FMPP activities and outcomes in the report attached.

Draft description of Market Typology

An infographic titled “Farmers Market Praxis Typology” presents a matrix categorizing farmers markets as flagship, foodie, satellite, and tourist, with a focus on food sovereignty and the diversity of producer and community engagement.

FMC has long used this typology and its accompanying research that began through Market Umbrella’s trans•act project. That multi-year project, which included FMC, gathered real-time data across the U.S. on market design and functions in order to share that information with support entities, funders, and policy makers to better understand how to work with them, fund them, and grow markets’ capacity.

The typology, still unpublished although often referred to in many published research articles, is helpful to market operators as well in finding similar markets to their own, with operational methods, funding, and decisions that align with theirs.

The typology is not static, nor will all markets fit neatly into one type. Instead, like the market sector itself, it is best seen as a snapshot of U.S. market communities.  Through the questions and data collected through this framework, we can see shared goals across regions via selection of market day places, rules, the market’s vendors and its program collaborations. Through this research we can also see how the local, regional food and civic culture (and its challenges and assets) further define (and sometimes thwart) the market’s management success.

Simply put, with this typology we can urge funders to more fairly assess success for markets in the US, not relying only on size or age, and helping to increase understanding of the many ways that markets are designed for their local places.

This graphic is a simplified version of the typology gathered so far, with more research upcoming by its primary authors, by Dr. Moon and Richard McCarthy.

Fact Sheet for Market Partners/Social Media Ad Project