About United Farmers Market

United Farmers Market is an editorial publication for the people who make and sell local food and the people who buy it: cottage food producers, farmers market vendors, small farms, and shoppers who want to know what they are buying. We publish researched guides, state-by-state cottage food resources, seasonal produce notes, editorial recipes, and stories about how local food actually works. We launched in September 2026.

What we cover

The site is organized into seven sections plus a set of state guides.

• Cottage Food: starting, running, and growing a home-based food business, including what you can sell, labels, packaging, food safety, and the rules behind all of it.
• Farmers Markets: how markets work from both sides of the table, from becoming a vendor and designing a booth to payments, weather, and the people who run the market.
• Business: pricing, margins, branding, marketing, retention, and operations for very small food businesses that still need to make money.
• Local Food: for people who buy local, including how to shop a market well, store produce, understand CSAs and SNAP, and make sense of what "local" means.
• Seasonal: what is in season, region by region, with buying and storage notes.
• Recipes: editorial recipes built around market ingredients and the kinds of products home food makers sell.
• Stories: histories, analysis, and features about the local food economy, grounded in public records and cited data.
• State Guides: cottage food rules state by state, drawn from each state's statute and agency guidance, with a reviewed date on every guide.

Who it is for

Most of our guides are written for producers: the home baker deciding whether a cottage food registration makes sense, or the vendor filling out a first market application. A second set is written for shoppers, and some pieces are for both. We assume you are busy, that your budget is small, and that you would rather have one accurate answer than five vague ones.

How the work is done

Articles are researched from official and primary sources: state agencies, USDA, FDA, university extension programs, the Farmers Market Coalition, and companies' own documentation. Each piece goes through drafting, a fact-check pass, a copy edit, and an image licensing review before it can publish. Articles that depend on laws, prices, or platform features cannot go live until a pre-publication review is cleared. Every article shows the date its facts were last reviewed.

Drafts are produced with AI assistance under human editorial direction and are reviewed before publication. We do not claim interviews, first-hand reporting, or kitchen testing unless a piece says so explicitly. The full process is described in our editorial standards, our sourcing and fact-checking policy, and our AI and editorial technology policy.

Who writes it

Articles carry the byline United Farmers Market Editorial Team. We do not invent named writers. If we add individual authors later, they will be real people with real bios.

Ownership

United Farmers Market and Local Cottage Foods are related brands built by the same team. We recommend Local Cottage Foods for cottage-food sellers who need an online storefront. We do not currently sell ads or sponsorships or earn affiliate commissions.

Market Dispatch

Market Dispatch is our weekly email: the newest guide, what is in season, and a few things worth knowing before market day. We collect only your email address to send it, and every issue includes an unsubscribe link. See the privacy policy for the details.

Photographs

We do not use AI-generated images. Every photograph on the site is a real photograph published under a verified open license, with attribution shown on the page and listed on image credits.

Get in touch

Story ideas, questions, and press inquiries go to contact@unitedfarmersmarket.com. If you spot an error, write to contact@unitedfarmersmarket.com; our corrections policy explains what happens next. More on the contact page.