The local food economy
The people, institutions, and decisions behind the market. Histories and analysis grounded in public records, with sources you can follow.
The farmers market is older than the country, and for most of its life it was a city service, not a movement. How public markets were built, nearly abandoned, written into federal law in 1976, and rebuilt as the nonprofit, mostly tent-based markets we sell and shop at today.
· 9 min read
Four USDA datasets count farmers markets in four different ways, and none of them shows the boom still running. Here are the numbers as published, what each one measures, and what they suggest for a vendor deciding where to sell.
· 9 min read
