Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program (FMLFPP) Applicant Webinars
On March 7, 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) announced the availability of $27 million in grants to strengthen market opportunities for local and regional food producers and businesses through the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program. Read updated information about these grants and register for upcoming webinars to learn more about them.
AMS will host two webinars to help farmers, producer groups and other potential applicants to understand the program requirements.
The Grants.gov webinar on Tuesday, March 27, 2018, at 2 p.m. (ET), will cover how to register in Dun & Bradstreet, track a submitted application, find funding opportunities and apply for those opportunities. The FMLFPP webinar on Wednesday, March 28, 2018, at 2 p.m. (ET), will provide an overview of the program objectives, eligibility and basic information about the application process. Register today:
Below is a link to a post I wrote a few years back about the lovely New Orleans tradition of creating altars on March 19th, St. Joseph, his feast day. This happens in New Orleans because of the large number of Sicilian immigrants that came to New Orleans starting in the 19th century; it was the second largest influx of Sicilian immigration in the 19th century behind New York City. In Sicily, thanks are given to San Giuseppe for preventing a famine in Sicily during the Middle Ages.
Food is obviously central to life here, but the idea of these altars has always seemed so special to me as it uses food to create homemade art and to feed people as the altars are broken down afterward and given out. Many of the altar societies also offer a meal on the day as well.
A study* from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service shows that consumers who buy fruits and vegetables from farmers’ markets spend more than $10 on average per week than consumers who buy fruits and vegetables from supermarkets — $28.36 and $16.53, respectively, according to The Packer.
The study also shows that consumers who shop at DTC outlets do not spend less at supermarkets overall, indicating that DTC outlets do not pose a significant threat to grocery retailers.
Although DTCs represent less than 0.5 percent of U.S. Agriculture sales, according to the report, consumers who visit DTC’s more frequently could lead to higher levels of fruit and vegetable spending across all outlets as they become exposed to more offerings.
The study’s takeaway? Encouraging consumers to shop at farmers’ markets and similar outlets more often could boost overall spending on fruits and vegetables.
*Stewart, H., & Dong, D. (2018). The Relationship Between Patronizing Direct-to-Consumer Outlets and a Household’s Demand for Fruits and Vegetables.
With the announcement of the 2018 FMPP/LFPP RFA this week – tucked into the Specialty Crop Block Grant announcement- I wanted to alert you to this 2017 post below about the indicators that are included in the proposal.
Congratulations to everyone who got their FMPP/LFPP grants in by the deadline yesterday. I talked or emailed with a few of you throughout that process and was impressed by the well-crafted strategies that I read and heard about.
As you can imagine, a lot of the calls I was on focused on the new prescribed indicators (performance/outcome measures) that were included with the RFP for the first time. Those were the same for FMPP as for LFPP projects and were:
OUTCOME 1: TO INCREASE CONSUMPTION OF AND ACCESS TO LOCALLY AND REGIONALLY PRODUCED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.
Indicators 1. Of the [insert total number of] consumers, farm and ranch operations, or wholesale buyers reached, a. The number that gained knowledge on how to buy or sell local/regional food OR aggregate, store, produce, and/or distribute local/regional food b. The number that reported an intention to buy or sell local/regional food OR aggregate, store, produce, and/or distribute local/regional food c. The number that reported buying, selling, consuming more or supporting the consumption of local/regional food that they aggregate, store, produce, and/or distribute
2. Of the [insert total number of] individuals (culinary professionals, institutional kitchens, entrepreneurs such as kitchen incubators/shared-use kitchens, etc.) reached, a. The number that gained knowledge on how to access, produce, prepare, and/or preserve locally and regionally produced agricultural products b. The number that reported an intention to access, produce, prepare, and/or preserve locally and regionally produced agricultural products c. The number that reported supplementing their diets with locally and regionally produced agricultural products that they produced, prepared, preserved, and/or obtained
OUTCOME 2: INCREASE SALES AND CUSTOMERS OF LOCAL AND REGIONAL AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.
Indicator 1. Sales increased from $________ to $_________ and by ______ percent ( n final – n initial/n initial (100) =% change), as result of marketing and/or promotion activities during the project performance period. 14 | Page 2. Customer counts increased from [insert total number of] to [insert total number of] customers and by _____percent ( n final – n initial/n initial (100) =% change) during the project performance period.
OUTCOME 3: DEVELOP NEW MARKET OPPORTUNITIES FOR FARM AND RANCH OPERATIONS SERVING LOCAL MARKETS.
Indicators 1. Number of new and/or existing delivery systems/access points of those reached that expanded and/or improved offerings of: a. ______farmers markets. b. ______roadside stands. c. ______community supported agriculture programs. d. ______agritourism activities. e. ______other direct producer-to-consumer market opportunities. f. ______local and regional Food Business Enterprises that process, aggregate, distribute, or store locally and regionally produced agricultural products. 2. Number of local and regional farmers and ranchers, processors, aggregators, and/or distributors that reported: a. an increase in revenue expressed in dollars: _____ b. a gained knowledge about new market opportunities through technical assistance and education programs: ______
3. Number of: a. new rural/urban careers created (Difference between “jobs” and “careers”: jobs are net gain of paid employment; new businesses created or adopted can indicate new careers): _______ b. jobs maintained/created:_______ c. new beginning farmers who went into local/regional food production: _____ d. socially disadvantaged famers who went into local/regional food production: ______ e. business plans developed:____
OUTCOME 4: IMPROVE THE FOOD SAFETY OF LOCALLY AND REGIONALLY PRODUCED AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.
Indicator(s) – Only applicable to projects focused on food safety. 1. Number of individuals who learned about prevention, detection, control, and intervention through food safety practices:_____ 2. Number of those individuals who reported increasing their food safety skills and knowledge:______ 3. Number of growers or producers who obtained on-farm food safety certifications (such as Good Agricultural Practices or Good Handling Practices): _____
The applicant is also required to develop at least one project-specific outcome(s) and indicator(s) in the Project Narrative and must explain how data will be collected to report on each applicable outcome and indicator.
These confounded many, while others knew exactly how to use these to define their grant’s outcomes. I hope that USDA calls in some of those who do a bang up job in setting and achieving their numbers to talk with the newbies in future years.
Because of the previous work on the trans•act tools (which include the SEED tool) while at Market Umbrella, and the more recent and engrossing Farmers Market Metrics (FMM) work I have been doing with FMC and their partners these last few years, I have become very familiar with this language and these indicators. Most are included in the metrics chosen by FMC to be collected starting in 2016 with FMM through their own projects and through offering support to networks that area ready to embed evaluation systems in their projects.
Since I spent some time working with various project leaders on this, I thought I’d give my two cents here as to how I’d approach these if I was the lead.In this post, I’m going to talk about my general theory of data at the grassroots level and the first two outcomes; I’ll tackle #3 and #4 and unique indicators in upcoming posts.
Some may disagree with my assessment of how to handle these indicators which to me is actually a good thing since by tackling this in varying ways, we are likely to hit on the best methods of establishing these baseline numbers and for collecting the data.
The first thing that confounded some proposal writers is how every indicator could be met by the varied projects: of course, they cannot and are not expected to. Since some projects are focused only on increasing sales at a market and not on increasing the number of outlets, some indicators are more relevant than others and should be used in more detail. Remember, these indicators are for both FMPP and LFPP projects which covers a wide spectrum and so are meant to support the general outcomes for all. It is my opinion that the unique indicators asked for at the end are likely to be the most useful for reviewers to read closely in order to match to the narrative or budget. I’d expect though that those proposals that could not reasonably answer a majority of the indicators with numbers will suffer in that reviewing process, as did USDA it seems, as they recommended in their webinar that everyone explain those that they couldn’t answer. Or if possible, add a piece to their project to address that indicator. And I think you can assume that USDA was being firm in saying that this pot of money should result in changes of these kinds, so if your project cannot reasonably do any of them, maybe look elsewhere for support.
I think the best way to really make these outcomes accurate is for the project lead to write them with the vision of using them as a banner to fly throughout the term of the project for the team to hit, surpass or to discuss why they cannot be met and what that means. And that the numbers should be slightly lofty-it is better to extend the reach at the outset and urge the team to do their best work to reach or even surpass it. However, don’t just throw some outrageous numbers in there or you will be telling the reviewers and your team that you have no intention of achieving them. So even though I used the word lofty, there is something in being efficient with your project through establishing very precise numbers too.
Efficiency is a good plan for our tiny organizations in order to conserve ours and our vendors’ energy for the long haul and to be there for another day. And that how well we plan and how we address our assumptions about those we hope to reach has a lot to do with setting numbers and meeting or achieving them.
Okay let’s look at the first two outcomes now:
Outcome 1: Increase consumption and access.
The indicators that are clustered with this outcome are related, meaning that once you have established the (a) the number of buyers and or producers that gained knowledge, you can then estimate the number (b) of those that then report an intention and then finally, the number (c) that reported actually buying, selling, aggregating etc. The second part of this outcome is related to those professionals like chefs or incubator-users who, if the project is expecting to reach that audience, then they are also going to be measured for knowledge, intention and actual activity.
I think this one was written out particularly well done as it takes a project step by step through the process of establishing their reach. This should have been relatively easy for most projects, as knowing how many people you plan on reaching is sort of 101 for FMPP or any USDA grant!
USDA’s suggestion was to write them out in a mathematical formula writing a beginning number, then the number you want to hit and then calculating the percentage of increase. It may be helpful to do that in 2 columns and consider both the direct and indirect ways that your project will reach people. Certainly, if you are doing training or workshops you can estimate your attendance, but how about those who just read about your training or workshop and track down the info that way? How about through the media that your project uses to gain attendees? Is it reasonable to think that others will hear about the market or outlet and begin to attend because of it? And never forget the vendors and including them into any project outcome, even if it is a straight up new shopper project; the vendors also can learn about the marketing and use it in their own sales reach if it is shared properly. And of course, how about the project partners and their reach?
Once you set the number who will gain knowledge (and I think that your project should plan that just about everyone that gets your materials or attends your workshop will gain knowledge) you then think about who will change their behavior because of it. I wonder if I had a group of market managers and a group of vendors in one room and asked them to gauge that if 1,000 people are reached through materials or training, how many they think will actually intend to use it, and then how many will actually use that knowledge to buy, sell aggregate etc what differences we’d see. Because that estimate can vary, based on the perspective and experience of those setting the number.
My feeling would be that the vendors would assume that more people will intend to come but would think that less will actually buy. I say that because they deal with everyone directly and know painfully well how many pass by their table without eye contact or a deep perusal of what is for sale. So they know firsthand how getting people to actually do something is hard. I’d say that managers would be more likely to think more people will be reached but that less would report an intention to come to a market, but that once they are there, that a higher percentage will purchase. My assumption may be entirely wrong and maybe someday I can test it and readjust it. The most important thing is to test your project assumptions by asking everyone for numbers and adjusting them accordingly to their bias and experience and according to your plan.
I also think percentages without numbers can be difficult to be realistic about, so I often suggest that people start on the wrong end: if the project is for increasing shoppers to a single market, how many more shoppers could that market actually handle per week? 100? 200? 1000? Think about the vendors and your space and your Welcome Booth and visualize adding that number every week. Would it overwhelm the market? Do you have enough parking or access to transportation to make it happen? How many added shoppers per hour would that mean to your anchor vendors? Is that worth it?
Remember that the average shopper in most markets spends between 10-30 dollars so using those numbers above, the market would add another $1000 -$30,000 week in sales. Pretty cool huh? Or if you hope to add another market day: Maybe your Saturday market has 45 vendors on average, you might estimate that since your new market is smaller and has less parking, that you hope 25 or so can use this new outlet. In both cases, your initial outreach has to be wider than the final number, as some will not get to your market or have the ability to add market days even when told of the opportunity.
Outcome 2: To increase sales
Couldn’t be simpler as, in most cases, FMPP projects are still chiefly attempting to increase sales. It may be true that at some later date, sales increases are not the primary indicator of the success of our work, but with the small reach that alternative food outlets currently have with food shoppers, I agree that this should still be the main goal. Even so, this indicator stymied more people (and I would imagine contributed to some not writing a grant at all) and since it is a common metric for FMM, I’m going to attempt to reason why it is necessary and how we can capture this.
Measuring an increase of sales for a project that is going to do marketing or outreach for a single sales outlet is pretty standard. The issue is that you need a baseline number (starting point) and that is the thing many markets do not have yet. So how do you find the baseline?
Everyone knows that the majority of markets ask for standard stall fees which are not based on vendors’ sales percentages and because of that, many markets have never asked for sales data from their vendors*. What USDA, FMM, Wholesome Wave and others are now saying is that we need to know the impact of our work whether you collect this data for the market’s fee rates or not. So, for those who do already collect it, you are ahead of the curve and probably have a lot to teach the rest of us about how to do it well.
So how do the rest of us do it? Well, the simplest way is to ask vendors directly, either every market day, every month or every season. As you can imagine, the longer you wait to ask this, the more difficult it becomes for the vendor to separate the numbers from your market from the other outlets he/she sells at. However, it also is difficult for multi-tasking vendors to stop at the end of the day to count their money and get that number to you. So what works best? My answer is one that some people hate hearing: whatever works best for your community and your management level is what works best- as long as it gives you accurate data in increments acceptable to those using it.
I’ll talk your ear off about accurate data whenever discussing market evaluation because it is my experience that markets rely too much on anecdotal information and estimates that probably are better described as guesstimates as they have almost no basis in real numbers. I can hear many of you yelling at me through your computer that you are not evaluators and cannot be expected to gather data. My answer to that is as soon as you create projects that use the resources of partners and promise your community some change in behavior because of these efforts, you are both. Meaning as soon as you decided to run a market. (You like how I run the entire argument on my own and that I get the last word?)
However, I am in agreement with many market leaders and vendors that too much data is often asked of markets or vendors that is never used or not shared back with those who offered it. And of course, that collecting the data and the costs associated are almost never added to the cost of any project, and usually, partners just assume that overworked market communities will just throw that added work in their long list and get it to them toot sweet.
Yeah, don’t get me started on data collection challenges here.
Additionally, sales data is at the top of the sensitive information asked presently and I often ask managers or market partners to tell me how much is in their bank account right now as an example of how asking for information without context or reason is alarming to say the least. That is, if you even know a precise number! So I say first be the change you want to see by sharing market data with vendors regularly: token sales for debit are going up but SNAP is steady? What do you think that means? And then ask them what they think it means.
Asking for it in anonymous sales slips is the way FMM suggests it is collected, but I assume that there are other good methods to test. And that it helps all of those methods when the raw data is shared with the vendors and it is used to advocate for their needs. It must be said that to be able to use it in aggregate means it has to be collected in the same way for the same time period and a lot more data is needed to get to any collective contribution, so we do need to hit upon some common methods sooner rather than later. Here are two more possibilities:
And as many of you know, the SEED tool asks shoppers to estimate their purchases and then calculates overall sales from those numbers. Many feel this method of getting sales is better, but it does require more surveying of shoppers more often which means added staff and volunteers.
Another way may come as some markets grow their token systems. Depending on your market, it might be possible to estimate how many of your shoppers use that system and whether it is representative of the type of overall shopper you have and use the data to estimate sales.
The main point is we have to agree that we need some data and it should be as precise as possible without violating privacy or exposing weaknesses in one business over another- after all, this is a competitive place. The data you can use for internal analysis as to the market’s impact on its vendors and shoppers can be a lot less and a lot less specific than the data your research partners will need when they start to calculate economic numbers. And that until you have actual data, how you calculated your starting point for these indicators says a lot about your circle of advisors, your experience and your knowledge of the target population.
Whew; enough for now. I’d love to hear how some of you did calculate both of these outcomes and especially sales, both in systems you had baselines and ones that did not. I expect that some of you will disagree with much of my unscientific approach to measurement but hope you know that I welcome your opinions.
While at New Orleans NGO Market Umbrella from 2001-2011, one of the projects I managed was the Go Fish/ Go Market video series funded by the Kellogg Foundation. Over 34 teaching videos were created during this project, primarily to share innovations from market vendors in areas of production, marketing or sales. In addition, we did some videos to explain how the market itself worked and this video was designed to introduce the steps during set up at the Tuesday market to any new vendors. I’d recommend that markets do this type of video for their market, and of course, the availability of digital equipment and skills in making short movies among the market staff and volunteers is pretty good these days!
I am very proud of this series even though viewing it in ensuing years is bittersweet as many of those in the video are long gone from the market and some even gone from this planet.
Any and all pop-up community efforts interest me and the Burning Man phenomenon is certainly an excellent example. As a long-time “Deadhead”, I learned to embrace outsider culture, bartering, the gift economy, open-source technology, and more in that community. All market leaders would do well to examine these pop-up efforts too.
What was amazing about the DH culture (especially before MTV began) was the level of self-organization and civic energy contained and managed at these massive events. This was possible because of simple and clear rules that somehow everyone knew about. That is how it ties into markets then and now; to learn how we can maintain some informality and innovation while still offering a standardized approach to make it easier for vendors and for shoppers to know what is what.
One example of their system approach was the Grateful Dead’s ticketing system, long done by mailing a request to the band’s office through the little San Rafael CA post office. The system was called Grateful Dead Ticketing Service (GDTS) and was begun in order to diversify their audience to those who could not camp out overnight for tickets or were not near to a ticket office. Mailers often decorated their envelopes in the hopes that their artwork would make their request more appealing; the band maintains a fabulous archive of many of the best of those envelopes that they received. The mail-in process was still agonizing as most of the tour dates had more requests than tickets and so a random selection was used to select who received tickets. And in order to be eligible, the details for mailing in your request had to be followed EXACTLY. Remember this was long before the days of internet and its easily found instructions. my memory was that other Deadheads sat down and taught me how to mail in for tickets.
The second area where the Dead innovated was a system for allowing concert-goers to tape their shows. From a Rolling Stone story about the band and its embrace of technology:
Since the band started officially sanctioning the practice in 1984, the tapers built a worldwide music distribution system that sustained the Dead and helped launch bands like Phish, Widespread Panic, and dozens more. This network (and modern service-oriented variations like NYC Taper) presaged Napster by a generation, survived the radical remaking of the recording industry and laid the foundation for open online file trading.
That is exactly the kind of crowdsourced approach to rules that many markets maintain with humor and tact which keep them out of tense situations and keep them as lively as these communities are decades after their origin.
Maybe we can also learn from these communities by figuring out how we can maintain an online archive of market stories, recipes and unique cultural moments somewhere too.
BM is another example of organization, this time by a later generation with a different aim that should also be studied. This article is a great example of their planning for the site, even if the author took a slightly cynical view of it, even calling the give and take he and his friends have to answer “bureaucracy”. I’d argue that word is not accurate as the planning and management is led by the community, is quite flexible in the design stages and anyone with a clipboard can explain why the rules exist: The Amazing Bureaucracy of Burning Man – CityLab
By the way, inclusive planning, flexibility, and transparency are also rules that well-run many markets abide by and yet some are still accused of bureaucracy by those who do not want to engage during planning or understand how the community safety can sometimes need to limit personal expression.
Here is an example of how members of these pop-up feel-good events can step up to reduce the waste of these massive events and make an impact elsewhere.
I’ve been waiting for this for some time. The design of this program has depended on grants and at times, on the kindness of the neighborhood leadership, and as is the case far too often, on goodwill to carry them through. The costs (some of which are outlined in Paul Barricos’ thoughtful and honest interview in ensuing articles which indicate that the cost of rent and insurance were significant for a non-profit and doesn’t even mention the cost for utilities, which you can imagine…)
More importantly, the original idea was undercut almost immediately by for-profit versions of delivery services and by offering products with too little profit margin to make it. I also commend Paul and his Hollygrove CDC team who have done their best to learn about farming and retail as best they could and stepped up to provide an outlet for local farmers, much like Sankofa has been doing in the lower 9 section of New Orleans for about the same length of time.As local farmers Grant and Kate Estrade of Local Cooling Farm said today, think of the farmers who sell through this outlet and do your best to not penalize them because of this closure.
For me, the lesson is that community initiatives around food and farming in an urban environment are very very challenging, especially when supply and demand needs are not balanced and the retail food sector decides there is enough business to co-opt the idea behind these community efforts. As this may become public again(!), I will also share that when this leadership opened Hollygrove “farm” in 2008 ish, I sent a strongly worded message to them that I felt the mission and message were muddy and the farmers and harvesters would end up losing through their plan to become an aggregator and distributor without understanding the costs or scope of such an endeavor. Sadly, that is exactly the case.
Over the last 4 years, different students under the leadership of Jamie Renner at Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems took the questions and issues that NOFA-VT and FMC had collected over the years in order to research what markets had done in that situation and what the legal ramifications would be for each issue. Dozens of market leaders offered input and a few even let us go through their files or be interviewed to find case studies or to offer expert advice.
Now in 2018, we have a resource that we are all rightly proud to share with markets and vendors. The site is well laid out and offers enough detail to steer folks in the right direction and to assist their legal team in understanding what is available already and what are possible issues.
I hope that we can continue to build this toolkit in future iterations and expand on other questions raised since we began this project in 2014. Please let us all know how the toolkit is useful to you and how we might best increase its use if new funding comes our way.
“We found ourselves in this incredibly competitive environment where you want to test new concepts and give customers something new,” Gupta said. “We needed a way to bring in some of these hyper-local entrepreneurs, these small-batch products that you can find at farmers’ markets. And the way to do that was to lower the barriers to entry.”
The wheeled carts, left over from the market’s days as a train station, already were being leased to a few businesses that needed no refrigeration — like Lansdale’s Boardroom Spirits and newcomer Birdie’s Biscuits — for use as pop-up stands in the center of the building. The feedback from customers and owners was good, Gupta said, so last fall he and members of his team started working with the Health Department on turning the former Wan’s Seafood into a flexible space for multiple kiosks. The space has no built-in cooking station, but other than sinks, refrigeration, and the proper permits and licenses, it turned out little was needed for businesses to start selling ready-made food.
The first time I used food stamps, I cried. It was a predawn Saturday morning and I had purposely gone to the grocery store early to avoid pulling out the EBT card in the sight lines of people I worried would judge me. I felt like an imposter among self-paying customers.
Tension and discouragement hang dense in the air as soon as you walk into the human resources office. You’re at the mercy of a system powered by a comedy of inefficiencies. Lines form early. Waits are long. Paperwork disappears. Your life is ultimately laid bare in document form, fanned out in front of the person whose job it is to decide whether you’re optimally managing the finances of your household and whether you and your people deserve help from the government. It’s a reductive and demeaning process. The negative energy there makes even tiny babies cry.
…Poverty is crazy-making. It changes you, snatches your good common sense, and consumes your thoughts. You wake up thinking about being poor, spend your days plotting how not to be poor, and go to bed worrying about the consequences of being poor. You’re high-strung, easily provoked, always looking for answers. You snap on your children. You snap on your boos and baes. You snap on God. There are moments — long, inward-facing moments — when no scripture, no motivational meme, no inspirational quote can quell the urgency of not having enough.
As we head into the new year, my region begins its most productive and celebratory season. Now the height of citrus season, oyster harvests, gorgeous greens and multi-colored root veggies, we are also on the cusp of our Carnival season, starting on January 6th. It starts then because Carnival is a pre-Lenten celebration and that is the date of Feast of the Epiphany known in France as Le Jour des Rois and in Latin American countries as Dia de los Reyes Magos. Coincidentally, it is also the Maid of Orleans Joan of Arc’s birthday which is also celebrated in New Orleans with one of the most beautiful candelit parades on her day.
Parades and king cake parties will go on here until “Fat Tuesday” which is February 13th in 2018 and is the day before Ash Wednesday. That begins the Lenten countdown to Easter.
By the way, how many of you know that where Easter falls is based on the natural world?
First, find the vernal equinox, or the first day of spring (about March 21-22), on a calendar that lists basic astronomical data. Then look for the next full moon. Easter Sunday will then fall on the following Sunday.
The farmers markets have the same joyous Carnival attitude all winter here. Productivity does that. Satisfaction and anticipation can be seen in the faces of those behind their tables, with actual oohs and aahs from those spying those deep red Ponchatoula strawberries, or watching a senior walk to their car dwarfed by a bag of greens. Very similar to those presenting carnival tableaus from atop a float or those catching “throws” from below.
Having a sunny mild winter at the same time as a beautiful and convivial public celebration that lasts for weeks always strikes me as the best of luck that landed at my feet.
And it also reminds me how the work we do in farmers markets IS joyous and as good of a measure of the civic health of our places as public events like Carnival.
In this start of year post, I usually go on and on about the importance of markets and measurement and system thinking. If that appeals to you, you’ll find plenty of that in my archives.
But today, I just want to share what the godfather of place and stewardship, Wendell Berry wrote in his new book, “The Art of Loading Brush”:
It is a formidable paradox that in order to achieve the sort of limitlessness we have begun to call sustainability, whether in human life or the other life of the ecosphere, strict limits must be observed. Enduring structures of household and family life, or the life of the community or the life of the country, cannot be formed except within limits. We must not outdistance local knowledge and affection, or the capacities of local persons to pay attention to details, to the “minute particulars” only by which, William Blake thought, we can do good to one another.
Within limits, we can think of rightness of scale. When the scale is right, we can imagine completeness of form.
That, my friends, is my 2018 call to action. Capacity, scale, form. How we understand this concept for our work, especially now when so many outside actors strive to co-opt our language and mock our efforts as too small or too limiting is vital.
So you’ll find me talking about these three points all year, adding them to my 2017 exhortations specifically for market organizations (“Don’t hide the hard work” and “act like networks, not silos”) in all public presentations and posts here.
I hope to see many of you in person and to talk to more of you via (appropriate) technology.
This link is to a piece by Richard Campanella, an extremely popular New Orleans geographer who has written many books on the New Orleans region. He has become the regional go-to guy describing how this place shapes its people and how its people shape the place.
When I saw this piece on how he uses Google Street View to analyze a place better, I could see how it could reach beyond the world of academics and into the DIY world of farmers markets and public space.
How we measure markets is important yet we don’t have the luxury of choosing between all of the data collection methods that researchers in a controlled environment have available to them. Market organizers don’t always have access to teams of eager data collectors and analysts such as those a university professor can quickly assemble among their students. Because of those limitations, the more adventurous we are in seeking the most appropriate methods*, the better chance we will find the right suite of tools for our needs. The use of Google Street View could clearly assist a market searching for a new location, or help to decide how to lay out the market better or unveil the current uses of the area around a market in order to find program partners. Imagine using it for showing impact: taking a screenshot of an empty litter-strewn lot and then a year later showing photographs of that same area with a vibrant market now popping up. That set of pictures is almost enough for a market’s first-year annual report!
Campanella’s method is simple and could be easily used on a smaller cross-section than he did for New Orleans. Basically, he chose points across the area from 2016 to drop “Pegman” to see a 360-degree view of the area. Noting the density and activity of street life, graffiti, and bicycles, he then compared it to the earliest available imagery from 2007.
While Google Street View images are not regularly used in scholarly research, they can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional social-surveying methods, under the right conditions. Public health experts have used Street View as a neighborhood auditing tool, and have found it to be a reliable indicator of broader trends and patterns, if not fine targeted phenomena. And researchers at the MIT Media Lab used pairs of geo-tagged street images to “map the inequality of urban perception” by soliciting online input about which scene looked “safer,” “more upper class,” and “more unique.” Urban planners Reid Ewing and Otto Clemente assessed the viability of Google Street View and its competitors Bing Streetside and Everyscape for counting pedestrians, compared with live street surveys. They found that human raters were reliable in online counting and that Google Street View had the strongest correlation with live counts (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.864 on a scale of zero to one). Other researchers have proposed methods to remove people from images automatically, which would enable more systematic studies. Until such tools are widely available, researchers will have to devise sampling strategies, set up protocols, and manually deploy that invaluable remote assistant, Pegman..
I hope to see this method utilized by some markets in 2018.
*If you are searching for current methods already in use to measure your market, do check out the tool we have been working on for the last few years at FMC called Farmers Market Metrics. The collection methods are free and available to anyone who wants to use them and do not need an active account. The good news is that the Metrics Program will be available to markets in early 2018 which will be explained via webinar announced soon.
Also, check out the FMC Resource Library for the piece on visitor count methods that I did recently, and keep an eye for the visitor survey article I am doing now, which will also be posted to the Resource Library.
If you read this blog regularly, you know that one of my two suggestions for markets in 2017 was to “Operate more like networks,” which is how I think our low-capacity, mission-focused work will be able to do all of the wonderful things it needs to do AND withstand the type of pressures from those who would like to co-opt the authenticity of our work.
So to help, I continue to read how best to network existing markets and food projects in ways that will actually lead to cooperation. This book offers one set of ideas.
The author, well known for his books on labor and cities, dives deep into mutual benefits including the new world of “impatient” capital, new forms of labor and increasing structural inequality to show how those trends mean we must rethink how cooperation can be strengthened.
To understand one difficulty in expanding cooperation in this ever more dangerous world of anonymous online trolls and daily road rage incidents, he brilliantly defines the “uncooperative self,” a new type of citizen emerging in the world who has lost contact with others in any meaningful way due to the lack of informal and formal ties to any group. Obsessed with their own feelings and place in the world, they refuse to honor the larger blockchain of courtesies carefully built over generations and instead resolve their own anxiety through retreat and alignment only with those they perceive as exactly like them. Powerful stuff.
Additionally, his criticism of coalition work grown too large to maintain contact or ability to gather meaningful input from their base is well argued and something many of us have noted even as we understand that coalition-building is vital. His analysis of coalitions is helped by the description included of the five type of exchanges, often collectively known as game theory. The very definition of cooperation means that benefits are exchanged, yet HOW each actor benefits is not always the same.
In terms of keeping coalitions viable, there must be a process for ensuring that the “face-saving rituals” used by their leaders don’t become more important than making gains for their supporters. Anyone who has viewed elected officials’ pointless press conference to show political cooperation that then goes nowhere in passing meaningful legislation or when cities require developers to include benefits for the at-risk in their original agreement even as all players know full well that the loopholes allow them to do away with those benefits, knows this type of ritual. Or, sadly, even some of the coalitions in our own food and farming work that lose track of the needs of their grassroots communities they once worked tirelessly for. Happily, I know that thinking about those farmers, advocates and market leaders needs and how to build THEIR skill and power is a constant effort of my colleagues in my work at FMC and certainly has once again become the strength of Slow Food USA under its current leader.
Sennett’s obvious allegiance to community organizing is something I share and so I found it helpful to have settlement house history and characteristics described and outlined, including those examples at the end of the book of faith-based, simplicity-based or socially-based community cooperation.
The only slight criticism I have is the last chapter; his restoration, remediation, and reconfiguration methods of community-building need a little more work to make that framework useful. Still, this book is a milestone in understanding why and how working together has changed and how it can be reborn in this new age.
….check out a recent report [PDF] done by environmental consultancy Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program. TEEB [Editor’s note: TEEB is now known as the Natural Capital Coalition] asked Trucost to tally up the total “unpriced natural capital” consumed by the world’s top industrial sectors. (“Natural capital” refers to ecological materials and services like, say, clean water or a stable atmosphere; “unpriced” means that businesses don’t pay to consume them.) Now, here are the top five industrial sectors ranked by total ecological damages imposed:
Helping Farmers Markets Grow 