Dear Farmers Market friends, members and followers,
This time last year, we were poised to launch our first global farmers markets campaign to calculate our combined impact upon biodiversity, rural development, and consumer food access. We learned a lot during this ambitious campaign to demonstrate that and how Farmers Markets Count. The findings were surprising and impressive. They helped to reinforce many informal conclusions we have all developed from our own experiences as practitioner experts in our local food systems. With World Biodiversity Day just weeks away, anticipate social media posts from the International Secretariat that highlight the findings from last year’s evaluative campaign. We will do the same for July’s World Rural Development Day (sharing farmer findings), and also for October’s World Food Day (sharing consumer findings). Of course, we welcome you to join in on this social media blitz with your own posts. After all, the more we can convey coordinated efforts from a field that may appear to be hyperlocalised, it makes us stronger.
For this year’s Farmers Markets Count, we will handle things a little lighter, since we acknowledge that campaigns like this place extra demands on already overcommitted leaders. I write to you from the HQ in Rome. I know that many of you are finalising membership payments in order to keep your organisations in good standing for this year’s General Assembly. Thank you! Our numbers are growing, but we also must sustain those who made the pioneering commitment that has helped to move our strategy from the margins to the centre of food policy discourse. In the coming weeks, we will be sharing details about the digital General Assembly (in June); the physical General Assembly (in October) in Nairobi, Kenya, together with the innovations we are making in order to incorporate the many and useful inputs you provided us in the wake of the last one at FAO headquarters.
As many of you know, I do what many chefs do in their professional practice — a stage (originally a French term describing the extended period of cooking in a guest kitchen). Sometimes, this is what it feels like when I descend upon Rome and the International Secretariat offices to roll my sleeves up on site with our committed team. This month, it has also coincided with the first mission to Ghana (as part of our AREA Africa Programme) that also includes Senegal and Congo Brazzaville. All the more reason, let’s consider how farmers markets count:
- Ghana is not alone. During our mission, I was reminded how far we have come to make the case that farmers markets are not just something nice for municipalities to accommodate, but rather something essential in this age of polycrisis. Not only are new farmers markets popping up everywhere we traveled and met with local leaders in Ghana, due largely to WorldFMC board member Dr. Selorm Akaba’s visionary efforts, but there is an urgency to embrace new strategies that bypass the clumsy systems we have inherited from the 20th century. We learned how rice, garlic, tomatoes (a key ingredient in their national dish — Jollof rice), and onions flood the local market, forcing farmers to scramble for new crops and strategies. Ghana is not alone.
- We get what we measure. Unless we stake out measurable objectives, it is difficult to communicate to investors, peers, and competitors precisely how we add value to our diverse stakeholders. Thank you for helping to aggregate the shared data pool that we filled last year for the inaugural Farmers Markets Count campaign. We acknowledge that you already capture information, conduct evaluation studies for your own situation. In this respect, we asked you to do something additional. Thank you. Some of you are in the start-up phase of your operations and have yet to step back to conduct even informal studies. We received great feedback from you as to how the campaign helped you think about your impacts differently. Fantastic!
- Can we count on you? Our campaign garnered the attention of colleagues inside Rome’s international agencies that focus on food. Together, we will utilise this year’s FMCOUNT campaign to conduct a revised PLANT BIODIVERSITY study in July and August in order to publish findings to influence new audiences we have not yet reached in the international agencies that transform agrifood systems. Perhaps like you, I have been frustrated how little others comprehend regarding the farmers market impact upon local food systems, climate mitigation, biodiversity, etc. This next step may truly help us turn a corner of credibility with those who have perceived our work just too small to add up. In the coming weeks, we will share with you HOW to conduct this trimmed down biodiversity count. We focus on plant biodiversity: vegetables, fruits, herbs, grains, and legumes. It is our intention to make this year’s count less complicated for you. Of course, the wider our geographic reach, the better! It’s just that simple. Please join us in achieving this important study.
- The 2025 count will be a tool you can share. We are working with the University of Southern Lazio’s Marcello De Rosa to aggregate the findings and produce the final report from 2025 for you to use for your own communications and advocacy purposes. Already, he has authored and submitted an academic paper for publication focusing on the consumer food environment aspects of FMCOUNT. Later this month, we will share the full findings with analysis. In short, they demonstrate so many encouraging indicators about the value of your work
- During times of seasonal scarcity, farmers utilise value-added (food transformation) strategies to keep varieties in the market beyond the season. This is achieved through canning, drying, etc.
- Many were surprised by the diverse offerings we avail shoppers, especially compared to the monocrop supermarkets. Even the smallest of markets offer that which cannot be attained in full service retail outlets. This is a huge win!
- Farmers in peri-urban areas are unsurprisingly the backbone of farmers market, traveling fewer than 90 minutes to market. This sheds so much valuable insight into strategies to defend the most vulnerable of agri-food land, angles by which we can engage municipalities about issues they are struggling to manage, and opportunities to articulate political support for the families whose livelihoods on the land are overlooked by larger interests — most notably real estate developers who prey on small landowners in order to expand the girth of urban housing.
- Consumers demonstrate remarkable loyalty to farmers markets because they seek meaningful experiences, high value food, and the farmers themselves.
- Farmers Markets Count when it comes to women farmers. In recognition of the UN Year of the Woman Farmer, we will share the 2025 findings on social media with a special attention granted to this very theme that stands at the centre of much of our work. Not only are farmers markets points of entry for family agriculture, participation in farmers markets help to transform the power dynamics in families in positive ways. Women are able to leverage consumer knowledge, entrepreneurial insights they attain from market days, and also the new relationships they build. In short, farmers markets count because they make for stronger families. For more information about the UN Year of the Women Farmer, check out the UN website.
We are proud to associate with you, our global community of practice. Together, we will ensure that farmers markets count from Australia to Zambia!
