Citizen Scientist: Farm 2 Facts Supporting Farmers Markets

As multifunctional loci of local food economies and public activity, farmers markets impart diverse impacts on their surrounding communities. In response to the emerging scholarship on farmers markets, as well as the desires of market managers to buttress their decision-making with cogent data analy...

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Veröffentlicht in:Sustainability 2021-06, Vol.13 (11), p.6162
Hauptverfasser: Ledesma, Edna, He, Arden, Warsaw, Phillip, Suerth, Lauren, Morales, Alfonso, Rosenblum, Leah, Wiedenfeld, Brian
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:As multifunctional loci of local food economies and public activity, farmers markets impart diverse impacts on their surrounding communities. In response to the emerging scholarship on farmers markets, as well as the desires of market managers to buttress their decision-making with cogent data analysis, the Farm 2 Facts data collection toolkit was created by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to measure the economic, social, and ecological impacts of farmers markets. We document here the history of Farm 2 Facts. Through case studies of F2F members, we describe the ways in which individual markets, market organizations, and local governments use farmers markets as a means of achieving differing goals, as well as how Farm 2 Facts necessarily adapted to measure and support these goals. We argue that Farm 2 Facts is in a tight reciprocal relationship with market managers who become citizen scientists in order to support their managerial role and communicate the benefits of their markets. Given that market policy change is often the impetus for collecting data, empathy for the goals of market managers is inseparable from Farm 2 Facts. We find that a sensitivity to the dynamic needs of markets, an adaptive toolkit, and incorporating ongoing research into the toolkit are essential to supporting farmers market managers in their many duties.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su13116162