The New Farmers' Market:
Farm-Fresh Ideas for Producers, Managers & Communities

Anyone doing business in, as, or with a farmers' market should read this book. After reading it:

• Farmers thinking of trying their hands at direct marketing at a farmers' market for the first time will know as much as they'll want or need to know to get started.
• Market vets who've been selling at farmers' markets for years will have a tool that can help them evaluate and improve their market performance as well as the performance of their markets.
• Farmers' market managers will see their market with new eyes and be better equipped to make changes and improvements that can take their market to a new level of success and acceptance within the community.
• Local business and civic leaders will have a much better understanding of farmers' market dynamics and how to integrate those dynamics into their local business structure.

The authors decided their book into three parts, making it easy to zero in on the specific information a reader might be seeking. And if what you're looking for isn't in these pages, the bibliography and extensive resources sections in the back will probably have it. Where to get used market scales and market stall covers, for instance, or perhaps online connections for flower arranging and direct market cropping patterns.

"Part I: Selling at the Market" gets a farmer over all the initial hurdles to getting into the market and selling.
"Part II: Starting, Managing & Promoting the Market" speaks to managers and market boards on the three market basics.
And "Part III: The New Farmers' Market" places the market squarely in the context of local food systems that can sustain farmers and communities.

The book's knowledgeable voice begins with its authors. Corum has been a consultant in farmers' market development since 1979. Rosenzweig is the author of Market Farm Forms and operated a farmers' market for 12 years. Gibson is the author of the widely acclaimed Sell What You Sow! The Grower's Guide to Successful Produce Marketing, also from New World Publishing. Beyond that, they have gathered their information primarily from the people most involved with farmers' markets - farmers and market managers from all over the country - producing a book that has the feel of coming straight from the horse's mouth.

Which is also probably why there's no pie-in-the-sky claims that a farmers' market is the answer to all of a small-scale farmer's problems. This book won't encourage anybody to get into farming. At least, not if making money is their only goal. The message is plain that farmers can do better financially at farmers' markets if they work at it, but few will be adequately compensated for their effort and nobody's going to get rich.

So there has to be something going on at a farmers' market beyond the exchange of farm-fresh produce for money to explain the increasing popularity of farmers' markets. The authors say that beyond the produce sales is the equally vital exchange of ideas between farmers and consumers in a public setting.

"Farmers' markets can serve as a leading forum, a place for civic discussion about the issues our local agriculture and communities face in this new millennium," they say in chapter 13. "Farmers' markets have the transformative potential of connecting people. If we collectively envision our highest goals for true community and economic sustainability, our farmers' markets will become the centerpiece of community activity and pride even as they sustain the farms that form the true basis of a democratic society."

Considering how the dominant industrial farm/food system has thrived by consolidating production and reducing food variety, driving small-scale farmers out of business and keeping consumers isolated from that reality, the idea of farmers and consumers reconnecting at farmers' markets and revitalizing democracy sounds excitingly subversive.

Everything you need to get in on the action is in this book. Get a copy by calling toll free 888-281-5170 or go online at www.nwpub.net.