Project Title: Farmers Market Manager Training Round 1 (2003)               

Project Leader: Karen Delahaut

Project Category: Outreach/Education

Situation:  Farmers markets have proliferated across the country at a rate of 20% annually. In Wisconsin, there are over 150 farmers’ markets and this number continues to grow. Some key reasons for their success are the variety of products displayed, vendor participation, and good business and interpersonal skills. However recently, we have become aware of conflicts and issues that have arisen between market managers and their vendors. This project plans to identify these issues and their relative importance and take steps to rectify them through educational programs.

Many of the farmers’ market managers lack the necessary business and managerial skills to communicate with the market vendors. Unreasonable expectations for product availability exist and there are often cultural issues between managers and vendors. These educational offerings ascertained the managers’ level of business, managerial, and interpersonal skills as they related to their interaction with the market vendors. We also identified what approach they took with their vendors when communicating with them, how they handled cultural barriers and related issues, how they managed conflicts in the market between vendors, and whether they have established market rules and how these rules are enforced and what their expectations are of vendors regarding the availability of their product.

Response: On March 27th 2004 Gail Hayden shared her experience in setting up over 30 farmers markets in California with 51 farmers’ market managers in attendance. In addition to Gail’s discussion of market design, layout, and space allotment, she also discussed rule development and enforcement. Jo Prust, former market manager for the Dane County Farmer’s Market and attorney with DATCP’s Farm Center joined Phil Harris to discuss policies and guidelines for markets including liability issues. Dave Steinhardt from DATCP rounded out the program with a presentation on food safety and licensing.

Because there were still funds remaining from this grant, and because feedback from the 2004 workshop indicated there should be a second workshop in Eau Claire for people from the northwest region, I worked with John Behling and Kerry Ingraham to plan and conduct a workshop on March 4th 2005. Speakers for this workshop included Phil Harris from UW Madison discussing policies and guidelines as well as liability issues; Bill Falkenstein from Rural Mutual Insurance discussing insurance requirements for both the market and the individual vendors; and Erin Nutter from DATCP discussing food safety and licensing. At the end of the day, we had a panel of three market managers from markets of various sizes and years of operations to stimulated discussion amongst the audience.

Results: Thirty-six market managers attended the 2004 workshop while 27 attended in 20-05. The evaluations from the market managers were very positive and indicated that the information provided was very helpful. “Great depth of experience and extremely useful promotional Ideas”, “Nice not to have to learn everything the hard way”, and “Good networking opportunity” One comment that came up a few times was to hold another session geared more for smaller markets just getting started in smaller towns.

They particularly liked the market manager panel and networking experience. Comments on the market panel indicated there was a good selection of a range of market types and experience levels, which provided something for everyone in attendance.

Sixty-five percent of the 2005 participants indicated they learned enough to take back to benefit their local market while 100% of the participants in the 2004 seminar indicated the topics discussed were useful to their markets.

All Power Point notes from the speakers as well as typed up the transcript of the market manager session are available on the fresh market vegetable website at www.horticulture.wisc.edu/freshveg

Evidence: A written survey was distributed to all seminar participants at each seminar and was collected at the end of the session.  See the attached evaluation instruments and the responses of the participants at each session.

Budget: A budget of $6,800 was requested and received with $3,000 going toward materials of which included the book “New Farmers’ Market” and the remaining funds were used to reimburse the speakers for their time and travel expenses. As there are still approximately $1,500 remaining and a third workshop (without providing the participants the books) will be held in central Wisconsin in the winter 2006.