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market-farming - Re: starting farmers' markets

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Subject: Market Farming

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Betsy <blevy AT rsocsun.tamu.edu>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: starting farmers' markets
  • Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 14:53:06 -0800




Marcie Rosenzweig wrote:

> Thanks for participating in the market farming list. Could you please use
> snips to repeat back only those portions of a previous post you're
> responding to?

> Yes, I can, and no offense taken. By the way, I'm so glad for this list,
> and following
> this thread has been very informative for me. I'm a rural sociology
> graduate student
> and my area of interest is farm market consumers. With the consent and
> patient
> cooperation of a local market farming couple, I got a survey off the ground
> recently
> that I'm planning to expand. The results suggest two groups of consumers
> (none of this
> is going to amaze you folks, but it interested me). The large majority of
> the people
> who made their way to the farm stand on the couple's land appeared to be
> motivated less
> by self-interest and more by looking for meaningful social connections. To
> a head, none
> of them chose as their reasons for shopping at the stand, "recreation" or
> "atmosphere."
> On the other hand, the handful who DID choose "recreation" were
> dramatically less
> concerned with other people's welfare. The division was so dramatic that I
> went over
> the surveys again to make sure I'd coded them correctly.

I'm going to ask my farming friends to let me hand out more surveys at
another venue they
sell at, in front of an upscale grocery store, and see if the majority of
shoppers there
fall into the recreation category. The point, if I have one, is perhaps that
if you care
about customers, they will care about you - at least, the caring kind will
make that
extra effort to seek you out, because they want to know YOU. The ones who
don't care -
well, you can always market to them by going for the huge mark-ups that
gourmet
vegetables and atmosphere entitle you to - hell, if I ever get to try market
gardening, I
wouldn't hesitate! It seems possible to attract both groups by recognizing
their
tendencies.





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