Population Density and Local Food Market Channels O'Hara, Jeffrey K.; Lin, Jeffrey
Applied economic perspectives and policy,
September 2020, 2020-09-00, 20200901, Letnik:
42, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We estimate the effect of population density on the use of local food market channels in the United States. Farms with greater market size increase direct sales to consumers, but the spatial scale of ...this effect operates at shorter distances than previously considered. Local farms do not use distributors to increase production for sales at shorter distances. Our results suggest that technical assistance to increase local food products sold by proximate retail outlets would be more effectively deployed assisting farms that undertake sales directly to retailers instead of marketing products through distributors.
National-level empirical research can inform how policy can effectively support direct seafood markets. The US Department of Agriculture maintains a directory of farmers markets that has not been ...extensively used in direct seafood marketing research. I use this directory data to estimate the probability that farmers markets near commercial fishing ports in the United States offer seafood. The results provide insight into two policy-relevant constraints on direct marketing: (1) geographic limits to seafood sales at farmers markets and (2) accessibility challenges for low-income populations. I find that seafood sales at farmers markets are concentrated within 50 miles of commercial fishing ports and that lower-income people are less likely to have access to seafood at farmers markets. I discuss advances made in collecting data from direct marketing farmers and the potential value in collecting analogous data from direct marketing fishers.
Abstract
Online marketplaces could help direct-to-consumer (DTC) farms compete for customers making grocery purchases on the internet by reducing the search and transportation costs of in-person DTC ...transactions. While in-person DTC marketplaces have been conducive for metropolitan farms historically, we explore whether rural DTC farms, with distance-based challenges accessing customers, are more likely to have online platforms. We find that rural farms distant from metropolitan counties that are new to DTC marketing are 7% more likely to have online marketplaces than more experienced rural farms, while new metropolitan farms are less likely to have them.
US farmers market managers must be strategic in deciding which vendors sell at their markets. They would benefit from understanding how market characteristics impact vendor sales, although the few ...studies that have explored this topic have found inconclusive results. We use a unique panel database of sales at 13 farmers markets to estimate how vendors' sales are influenced by the characteristics of their farmers market. We find that average sales at weekend farmers markets becomes increasingly large as farmers markets increase in size. At weekday markets, average sales increase as small markets add vendors but eventually decline as markets become larger. These results could occur if weekend markets attract shoppers from increasingly greater distances as they become larger, while average sales eventually decline as weekday markets increase in size due to vendor competition. Produce vendors experience higher average sales at weekend markets than weekday markets and experience a relatively small increase in sales as market size increases. Vendors of hot prepared foods experience higher sales at weekday markets EconLit Citations: Q10, Q12, Q13.
We use a sales database of farmers market vendors in the Washington, D.C., area to estimate how first half 2020 sales were impacted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. We use 2019 data as a ...counterfactual for sales that would have occurred in 2020 in the absence of COVID-19. For neighborhood weekend markets that were able to remain open during the pandemic, the change in 2020 average sales between the winter and spring is between 75% and 79% lower than in 2019. Other farmers markets, particularly weekday markets in business districts, experienced delayed openings or were closed for the entire year.
Farm-to-school (F2S) local food procurement must be cost-effective to be financially sustainable without policy support. We test, among schools participating in F2S programs, whether market channel ...procurement strategies for local foods affect schools’ perceptions of whether meal costs decline as a result of F2S participation. Schools that buy local foods exclusively from intermediaries are 7 percentage points less likely to report lower costs from undertaking F2S initiatives. We further demonstrate that the probability that schools source local foods exclusively from intermediaries is influenced by the number of direct marketing farmers in their county.
States have increasingly adopted cottage food laws across the United States. The laws allow small‐scale food entrepreneurs to produce nonrefrigerated foods in home kitchens and sell them via ...direct‐to‐consumer outlets. Research has not yet established if the policies are, as intended, supporting start‐up food manufacturing businesses nationally. We estimate a differences‐in‐differences model using state‐level panel data to evaluate whether the passage of cottage food laws impacted the number of manufactured baked good establishments. We find a positive impact on the number of both employer and nonemployer businesses, with a relatively greater proportional impact for nonemployer businesses.
Local seafood marketing is intended to improve livelihoods in coastal communities and the sustainability of fisheries practices. While local seafood procurement aligns with the objectives of “farm to ...school” (F2S) programming in the United States (U.S.), local seafood purchases by schools are infrequent. Understanding the impediments to local seafood procurement can inform strategies to support such practices. This research employs Farm to School Census data to identify attributes that influence school purchases of local seafood at both the school-level and regional-level in the U.S. At the school-level, outreach strategies and promotional efforts employed by schools are important in influencing local seafood sourcing decisions, while the percentage of students on free/reduced-price lunch and school size are not. These findings suggest that technical assistance to practitioners is impactful in supporting the development of local seafood markets. Schools that are close to commercial fishing ports are also more likely to procure seafood locally. At the regional-level, North Pacific and New England schools had a greater propensity to procure local seafood than elsewhere. In the North Pacific this could be occurring because the commercial fishery is economically prominent. In New England this phenomenon may be occurring to develop new markets for alternative seafood species, since historically-important groundfish stocks are depleted. Local agricultural marketing is also relatively important in New England. Thus, there could be spillover benefits to local fishers from technical assistance resources developed to support the local marketing of agricultural products.
•Purchases of local seafood by coastal schools in the United States are investigated.•Outreach and promotional efforts by schools influence local seafood purchases.•Results suggest policy support could assist local seafood procurement by schools.•Seafood purchases are relatively high in the North Pacific and New England regions.
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