In 2021, the Farmers Market Coalition (FMC) entered into a partnership with the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and USDA Farmers Market Team, under a cooperative agreement titled “Increasing Food Access through Farmers Market Implementation and Education with Underserved Community Focus”. This agreement included two separate pilot projects centered on expanding nutrition education and access to local food.

The second pilot sought to test the USDA’s VegU program model at different types of farmers markets in different regions of the U.S. VegU is the nutrition and cooking education program designed at the USDA Farmers Market to teach market visitors how to “grow, pick, prepare, and store” different types of fruits and vegetables.

Read a report of the VegU pilot activities and outcomes and access the toolkit for this project in the document attached.