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Just where does local food live? Assessing farmers’ markets in the United States

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Abstract

Participation in the local food movement has grown dramatically in the United States, with the farmers’ market being one of its most widespread and heavily promoted forums. Proponents argue that the interactions and transactions that occur at farmers’ markets benefit market participants, but, more importantly, have broader benefits for the neighborhoods they are located in and for society itself. The promise of these benefits raises several important questions, notably: where are farmers’ markets located and who has access to them? While many works have examined the characteristics of individuals who frequent markets, few have examined the areas and inhabitants hosting these markets. Using data from the USDA and US Census, I explore the location of farmers’ markets areas across several geographic measurements, including at the national, census division, and census tract levels. Results reveal the following: (1) Perhaps not being as white of a movement as critics have suggested, farmers’ markets are almost exclusively a middle to middle-upper class phenomenon; and (2) Farmers’ markets are very unlikely to be found in neighborhoods with lower than average socio-economic statuses indicators, in specific divisions of the US, and in rural areas. Results from this research further illuminate our understanding of where farmers’ markets are located throughout United States while presenting some interesting questions for the local food movement as it continues to moves forward.

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Notes

  1. However, the history of the farmers’ market, especially between 1940 and 1970, remains somewhat unclear.

  2. Though certainly not a completely exhaustive list of every market in the US, this is a sufficiently large data set that is presumably representative of the farmers’ markets found across the United States.

  3. There were some tracts that have more than one market or have the same market occur more than once. Please email for this list.

  4. The author is happy to provide a series of tables that demonstrates this for the data used in this study.

  5. The USDA uses 1-mile as a buffer for maximum walkability and 10 miles for drivability.

  6. Given the large geographic size of rural tracts, no buffers were created because upon examination it was conceivable that based on the farmers’ market location, an entire county (or several counties) would be included as the “neighborhood”.

  7. There is, of course, the potential issue of spatial autocorrelation (i.e., correlation among nearby locations in space) when running t tests given that US Census tracts were used to create the neighborhood buffers. However, this analysis did not run Moran’s I or create spatial weights for the bivariate analysis given the debate in the literature on its necessity when only performing bivariate analysis (see Hawkins 2012; Kühn and Dormann 2012 for differing opinions). Ultimately, this analysis did not examine spatial autocorrelation because of Getis and Ord (1992) and Kühn and Dormann (2012) notes on the overwhelming tendency of research to only correct for spatial autocorrelation when running regression analysis.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Carly Keehn-Schupp and Andrew Martin for their help and support to publish this piece of work.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Kenyon College, 103 Ward Street, Gambier, OH, 43022, USA

    Justin L. Schupp

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Schupp, J.L. Just where does local food live? Assessing farmers’ markets in the United States. Agric Hum Values 33, 827–841 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9667-y

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