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.