Locally Grown Foods and Farmers Markets: Consumer Attitudes and Behaviors

By D. Conner, Kathryn Colasanti, R. Ross, Susan B. Smalley. 2010

227 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Farm viability poses a grave challenge to the sustainability of agriculture and food systems: the number of acres in production continues to decline as the majority of farms earn negative net income. Two related and often overlapping marketing strategies, (i) locally grown foods and (ii) distribution at farmers markets, can directly enhance food system sustainability by improving farm profitability and long-term viability, as well as contributing to an array of ancillary benefits. We present results of a representative Michigan telephone survey, which measured consumers’ perceptions and behaviors around local foods and farmers markets. We discuss the implications of our findings on greater farm profitability. We conclude with suggestions for future research to enhance the contributions of locally grown foods and farmers markets to overall food system sustainability.

Subfields: Ecology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72536ecd0d36d66ce339eab614fdb2e229595563

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Citations in the corpus

Consumers’ Preferences and Attitudes Toward Local Food Products (2016, background): “According to Conner et al. (2010), the increasing consumer interest for local foods is due to their ability to enhance the sustainability of the food system by reducing the carbon footprint and by providing new market opportunities for local farms.”
Characterizing Farmers' Market Shoppers: A Literature Review (2012, background): “As mentioned previously, Conner and colleagues’ survey concluded that in order to attract the Latino consumers to farmers’ markets in Michigan, cultural barriers (eg, language) would need to be bridged.(12) Another publication referring to the same Michigan telephone survey study indicated that limi”