Having been unable to find any information on Iowa's Farmers Markets beyond a simple listing by city, date, etc., I did some data analysis of these Markets myself.

First, using a blank map of Iowa, I created a green circle to represent each of the 174 Farmers Markets in Iowa. That map is attached to this post under the name "Farmers Market Map." These circles do not represent the sizes of the markets (information which I could not find), nor do they point to particular cities--only the counties they are in.

Next, I found the population of each Iowa county (US census estimates for 2003 populations were the best available data). I entered these numbers into a Microsoft Excel file, along with the number of Farmers Markets in each county. I then divided the number of Farmers Markets in each county by the population of that county, and multiplied the result by 100000, to get a number that is easier to work with (for example, 12.623 instead of 0.00012623). This number--in column D in the spreadsheet 'Sheet 1'--represents the number of Farmers Markets in each Iowa county per 100,000 residents of that county. A higher number indicates a greater number of Markets per capita, while a '0' indicates that the county has no Farmers Markets. A graph of this information is available in 'Chart 1' in the same document.

Finally, I separated Iowa into four regions--Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest; the dividing lines are shown in the attached 'Farmers Market Map.' I added up the number of Markets in each of these four regions--these numbers are shown in 'Sheet 2' in 'Iowa Farmers Markets by Region.' A pie chart reflecting the same data is shown in 'Chart 2' in the same document.

Also of interest is some research done at Iowa State University about Farmers Markets. The findings of this study are written up in an article entitled "The Experiences and Views of Iowa Farmers' Market Vendors: Summary of Research Findings," and is located at http://www.soc.iastate.edu/extension/publications/frmrs_mkt_report_C1.pdf. This report profiles a group of randomly selected vendors from Iowa Farmers Markets, including their views on such topics as "Reasons for selling at farmers' markets," and "Benefits of selling at farmers' markets." The report also includes information about the profiled vendors including ages, income, hours worked, etc.