UC researcher: Farmers markets benefit local economies

DAVIS
July 19, 2007 11:15am

It’s not just farmers, but communities and individual residents who are the beneficiaries of local farmers markets, according to a University of California food systems analyst who reviewed studies of the markets and their growth.

"There was a huge rise in farmers markets in the last 40 years and I wanted to find out why," says Gail Feenstra, with the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program in Davis.

In 1970 there were only 340 farmers markets in the United States; by 2006, there were more than 4,385 -- an increase of approximately 1,300 percent.

California makes up more than 11 percent or almost 500 markets, half of which are open year-round, she says.

"Farmers benefit from the ability to sell smaller and variable quantities, and learn the skills they need to increase their business," says Ms. Feenstra, who writes about the industry in the current issue of Gastronomic Sciences.

Direct marketing venues such as farmers markets help farmers sell their products in local communities for higher prices than they could get from wholesalers, she says.

Ms. Feenstra says the total gross receipts farmers receive at farmers markets, although modest by comparison to supermarkets, are still significant. Her 1999 study of California farmers markets estimated total annual sales at approximately $140 million.

"The social benefit that farmers markets bring to communities can't be overestimated," she says. In her interviews with market patrons, she found farmers markets to be a major source of interaction, both between farmers and their customers, and among the market visitors. Ms. Feenstra points to research that shows farmers markets not only encourage economic transactions on their premises, but also bring customers into town where they make purchases at other businesses.

Individuals expressed positive feelings to the researcher about buying food they believe to be clean and safe from farmers they know.

Low-income and elderly community residents receive particular benefits from farmers markets, Ms. Feenstra says, where they are more likely to find healthful, affordable, nutritious food or ethnically appropriate foods than at retail food outlets.

"At this point in history when we see cracks in the health of our environment, economic and social systems and declining natural resources, concerns about the future of long-term energy, and rising obesity rates, creating and sustaining local food economies with farmers markets as an important component, may be both an admirable goal and a necessity," says Ms. Feenstra. "The markets are important exchange networks that offer farmers, consumers and communities opportunities to participate in and strengthen the local food economies in unique places."