Grant Awarded: Bret Shaw Receives USDA-NIFA Funding to Grow the Customer Base for Farmers Markets

Bret Shaw, a professor of life sciences communication, received USDA-NIFA funding for his project Growing the customer base for farmers markets: Supporting rural economic development through evidence-based consumer research and resources through the Ag Economics and Rural Communities: Small and Medium-Sized Farms program. It was among 21 projects sharing $12 million in funding.

Project summary (from CRIS website): The overarching goal of this project is to strengthen the capacity of farmers markets to attract new consumers to purchase products from small and medium sized farms. To accomplish this, the Farmers Market Coalition (FMC) partnered with communication researchers who specialize in food systems. Our first objective is to identify current and potential farmers market consumer segments with an emphasis on individuals underrepresented at farmers markets. We will do this by conducting a national survey. Informed by those findings, we will test messaging strategies on social media through partnerships with diverse farmers markets. This innovative approach will allow us to examine the efficacy of message frames at increasing interest in farmers markets among audience segments. Thirdly, we will incorporate our findings into an expansion of FMC’s free evaluation resources and messaging resources (a new communications toolkit and an updated National Farmers Market week toolkit). Lastly, we will conduct a series of webinars to allow for regional dissemination of our findings and resources through partnerships with Extension’s national Community, Local, and Regional Food Systems Team and the North American Food System Network. Our project addresses the “small and medium sized farms” program priority area because it will encourage a new generation of customers to purchase food directly from small and medium sized farms at farmers markets. Many farms rely on farmers markets to provide this kind of high-level marketing support.