Farmers Market Data

MARKETS COUNT! COLLECTING, MANAGING & DEPLOYING YOUR FARMERS MARKET DATA

Like your heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature, the idea for the “farmers market vitals” is to have a set of key data points or indicators to help you track the health and growth of your market.

Rapid Market Assessment

This overview describes key features of a RMA, provides useful resources and templates if you are doing a RMA, and includes RMA reports from Washington farmers markets.

Step by Step Tips for Your Market Survey

While there are more and more free online tools to do your surveys, it’s important to think through some survey basics first so that you have useful results to report.

Farmers Market Research and Data for the State of Hawaii

Summary of major research on farmers markets and data sources for Hawaii.

VITAL STATS FOR YOUR MARKET

Like your heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature, the idea for the “farmers market vitals” is to have a set of key data points to help you track the health and growth of your market.

In 2010, a group of market managers in King County, Washington, met and agreed upon a set of indicators that can tell us something important about farmers markets.

Each indicator needed to meet three criteria:

Be realistic for one manager with one market to collect;
Be meaningful; and
Be able to be aggregate with other markets’ data at a larger scale – whether a city, county or even state.
Markets Vitals Project Overview (Feb. 2016)

RAPID MARKET ASSESSMENTS

The Rapid Market Assessment or “RMA” is a key tool for farmers markets to collect baseline data, gain new insights and ideas for improvement, measure progress, build consensus and inform big decisions. Using a participatory methodology, a team of local community members and managers from other markets spend an intensive day at the farmers market:

Counting shoppers;
Recruiting shoppers to answer a “dot survey” (questions written on flip charts that people answer with round, sticky dots); and
Providing constructive comments and observations about the market’s physical site, atmosphere, and vendor mix.

Rapid Market Assessment Overview (Sept. 2016)

2017 RMA Reports from Washington State

Downloadable RMA Worksheets and RMA Tools:

OSU Exentsion Service “Tools for Rapid Market Assessment”

TIPS FOR YOUR MARKET SURVEY

Collecting information and asking for customer feedback is a great practice for any business, including farmers markets and vendors. The good news is that there are more and more online tools to help collect, analyze, and even display information.

While there are more and more free online tools to do your surveys, it’s important to think through some survey basics first so that you have useful results to report.

Step by Step Tips for Your Market Survey – Overview (Feb. 2016)

FARMERS MARKET RESEARCH FOR HAWAI’I

Finding up-to-date data to help you plan, manage, and promote your market can be a challenge. Below are a few leading resources.

Washington State University Farmers Market Research
In partnership with a statewide “Farmers Market Action Team,” the WSU Small Farms Program has coordinated various farmers markets research projects, including 14 Rapid Market Assessments, a statewide survey of farmers markets managers and farm vendors. All reports are posted on the Small Farms Team website. In addition, a WSU Wireless Technology Project researched the impacts of EBT and credit/debit programs at farmers markets with support from the WSDA Specialty Crop program. Data from this project are included in the Food Access Programs at Washington State Farmers Markets (2015) report and Tilth Producers Quarterly article (2016).

Also see Rapid Market Assessments.

Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP)

The Department of Health creates an annual report for FMNP sales, usually by county and legislative district. In 2016, this data was posted online. Look in the “Data and Statistical Reports” section under “Health Behaviors” and look for WIC.

Farmers Market Coalition

The “Market Metrics” project of the FMC brings together their best tools to help farmers markets collect data. The goal is to create a recommended set of data that any market can collect, analyze, and share online. The FMC will be providing training on this project as well as other forms of evaluation and how it works.

United States Department of Agriculture

The USDA has a variety of reports and resources that include farmers market data: