I have a few pieces of information from work done by Dr. Daniel Otto and Theresa Varner that relate to the question of “radius of impact†of Iowa Farmers’ Markets (how far sellers and buyers travel to reach markets). I will post more information regarding this question as I find it.
- Consumers traveled an average of eight miles to get to a market
- The attached file entitled “Radius of Impact Table†contains a table listing the number of visits to and the miles traveled to farmers’ markets, based on their size, from a sample population from Dr. Otto’s survey.
- Though I couldn’t find any information on the number of miles vendors traveled to reach each market they sold at, Dr. Otto’s study contained some data regarding the number of different farmers’ markets vendors planned to attend during the 2004 season:
- 1 Market: 50% of Respondents
- 2: 24%
- 3:12%
- 4:6%
- >5:8%
One can infer from this data that, on average, the more markets a vendor attended, the farther they had to travel to reach each additional market (of course, this data says nothing about the distanceeach vendor had to travel).
The above information is from a paper entitled "Consumers, Vendors, and the Economic Importance of Iowa Farmers' Markets: An Economic Impact Survey Analysis," by Dr. Daniel Otto, Department of Economics, Iowa State University, and Theresa Varner, Graduate Student, Iowa State University.
Demographic and market participation information in the study was collected from a sample of over 4500 consumers and over 780 vendors during the 2004 season. Surveys were conducted by the Iowa Agricultural Statistics Service; the consumers and vendors from a large sample of markets taken from a list of all Iowa markets were selected to take the surveys.
The findings of this study are available in Otto and Varner's paper, located at http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/research/marketing_files/markets_rfswg.pdf
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Radius of Impact Table | 13.5 KB |
Farmers Markets websites in our target 8 counties
Check and see if any of the Farmers Markets in our study area have websites. If so, how do they use the website? Is it an active part of their marketing efforts or a place/location/map brochureware type website only? What do you think of their website efforts (if there is one)? Are there one or two that stand out?
Let's dis-include Henry county from the Fairfield pack of counties to keep our focus on the 4 counties surrounding each target location.
However, when you look for websites ... take a look at the Mount Pleasant site. If I remember correctly they are (were) updating the website weekly with lists of the produce that would be available that week. Haven't looked at that site for a long while, but when I did I was impressed.