Toward a Better Understanding of the Markets.

How to Evaluate a Farmers’ Market

by Tom Roberts, Feb 2015

I wholly support the commitment of MFFM resources to having staff members visit local markets throughout the state in order to better understand the realities that exists in the local markets. And to thereby be able to communicate that understanding and perspective to the MFFM Board. Without such knowledge of the realities that exist within the local farmers’ markets, there is no valid way of understanding forces, situations, and trends that are affecting those markets.

Without doubt, the sharing of vendors among the markets goes far in benefiting this mutual market understanding. Having Board members themselves being active in a multitude of markets goes a long way toward broadening MFFM’s overall understanding of the situation of Maine markets today. However, once we add up all the markets that the Board directly represents, we are left with a majority of markets which have no direct contact with any MFFM personnel. This is where the visits to those markets, and communications with their organizers and their members, continually fills in that gap in our understanding.

One way to evaluate the performance of MFFM staff is to reflect upon the volume and quality of the information that is shared from encounters with the markets.

For example, if a visit to a market while it is in session merely yields a report of how many of what type of vendor showed up at the market and how busy everyone seemed, then this is clearly only a baseline level of info. If, however, that same market visit reported on the level of conflict or cooperation among market vendors, the level of sharing of ongoing market responsibilities, the numbers of groups of shoppers congregated within the market, and so on, then this becomes a far more valuable report on that market’s reality than it would be otherwise.

Similarly, a report on a visit to a market meeting could be limited to the topics discussed and the decisions made. Yet it would be more valuable to include whether the attendees were arranged in a circle or in an audience-and-presenter style, whether everyone was encouraged to take part in discussions, how disagreements were handled, how often voting versus consensus was used, and so forth. This latter would provide a far greater sense of the health of the market as an organization.

The amount of effort and detail that such reports would require of the MFFM staff to present, and of the Board to receive, would be worthwhile due to the more accurate perspective this would give the Board concerning the reality among Maine’s farmers’ markets.

～∞～