Darlene Wolnik

Senior Project Manager

Darlene Wolnik (Wahl-nik) has been a national advocate and trainer for farmers markets for more than 30 years, starting out as staff at Louisiana’s oldest and largest farmers market organization Market Umbrella (formerly ECONomics Institute). While its Deputy Director, she supervised the four weekly year-round farmers markets, and its other pop ups including Fair Trade Holiday Market (Festivus), its seasonal White Boot Brigades and designed and ran the first free farmers market resource sites in the US (MarketShare). Since then, Darlene has consulted for hundreds of markets assisting with design, operations, data collection, and analysis support.  She has worked with FMC since its inception and joined as staff in 2015.

Current focus: Dar oversees all farmers market support staff projects and leads the networking of market leaders, analysis of the farmers market sector, and the collection and development of technology and tools appropriate for markets including FMC’s evaluation work and the FM Legal Toolkit.  

Pronouns: she / her / hers

Dar divides her time between Cleveland, OH, and New Orleans, LA. She can be reached at darlene@farmersmarketcoalition.org.

Publications/Blogs:

• Led the design of the Why Hunger Community Food Justice Toolkit in 2012
• Authored:
  • 2013 Vermont Market Currency Feasibility Report
  • 2014 Local Food Awareness Report for Gulfport MS
  • Collaborated on a multitude of FMC articles including “Designing Effective, Scalable Data Collection Tools to Measure Farmers Market Impacts,” “Farmers markets as a strategy for improving food environments,” and   “Iteration, Innovation, and Collaboration: Supporting farmers markets’ response to COVID-19”
• Co-authored:
  • Witzling, L., Shaw, B., & Wolnik, D. (2025). US farmers market attendance and experiences: Descriptive results from a national survey. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 14(1), 227-249.

Podcasts:

• • • https://rss.com/podcasts/growing-evidence/2364911/