United States Department of Agriculture

Methodology and Quality Measures

Aug. 17, 2020

• Methodology and Quality Measures Report
• Report Form

Program Content

For the purposes of this study, a farmers market is defined as a collection of two or more farm vendors selling agricultural products directly to customers at a common, recurrent physical location. The farmers market manager is defined as the person who oversees the vendors, products, and staff at the farmers market.

Uses

The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) uses these data to measure the customer demand of local foods from the Farmers Market manager’s perspective, look for potential expansion opportunities, target access to nutritional foods, market nutritional education, measure access to local foods and organic foods, and strengthen community engagement.

Frequency

This survey will be conducted every 5 years

Methods

The survey population for the National Farmers Market Manager Survey were managers of U.S. farmers markets operating in 2019. Data collection began in March 2020 and concluded in June 2020 with analysis and review completed by publication on August 17, 2020. The survey was administered in the contiguous 48 states.

The sampling frame was comprised of two frames to enable a measure of coverage. The sampling frames were the Farmers Market Directory maintained by AMS and a web-scraped list. Together these two frames resulted in approximately 12,000 records in the contiguous 48 states. A stratified systematic sample of 10,000 farmers markets was drawn from the union of two frames.

Related Programs

2015 Local Food Marketing Practices Survey