Different seafood supply chain pathways contribute to or conversely detract from the resilience and adaptive capacity of the fishing sector. Direct seafood marketing strategies shorten the link ...between seafood harvesters and consumers. These strategies appear to be relatively resistant to systemic food system disruptions, making them a potentially important segment of a resilient food system providing benefits to consumers and harvesters. However, little is known about the scale and diversity of the direct seafood marketing sector in the United States. This paper outlines the advantages of collecting data on direct seafood marketing in the US. Additionally, we describe our methodology for creating a sampling frame of direct seafood marketers. We provide initial results from the first national assessment of direct seafood marketing practices, including results from a questionnaire distributed to 39,511 commercial seafood harvesters engaging in wild capture fisheries. Direct seafood marketing was a common strategy among respondents, and the most popular strategy involved selling to a source-identified distributor, i.e. intermediaries who identify the harvester at the point of sale. When combined with data on direct seafood marketing permits, it is estimated that 12% of US seafood harvesters engage in direct seafood sales. These findings suggest that direct marketing is a ubiquitous practice in the commercial fishing sector in the US. Understanding scale and diversity of direct seafood marketing in the US can provide information needed for targeted investments in policies, funding, and technical assistance programs that build diverse, resilient seafood supply chains, and benefit the fishing sector and food security of the nation.
This report presents an analysis of responses obtained from visitors to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) outdoor farmers market at 12th and Independence Avenue, SW, in Washington, ...D.C. during two market days, September 10 and 17, 2010. The Rapid Market Assessment, also known as the dot survey, was carried out to assess the composition and shopping habits of the market’s customer base so the managers of the market could better understand their customers.
Personnel from the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service’s (AMS) Farmers Market and Direct Marketing Research Branch used the dot survey approach to conduct consumer research at the farmers market. The dot survey technique is a “self-service” research approach that asks a limited number of questions displayed on easels in the market. Individual questions are placed on poster boards, making it easy for consumers to indicate their responses with round, colorful, self-sticking dots. The dot survey technique is a quick, simple, and effective way to engage consumer participation and collect market data. It is among the most popular techniques for gauging consumer behavior at farmers markets.
Seasonal farmers markets remain the predominant market type in the United States. Approximately 88 percent of respondents reported they operated seasonal markets, open, on average, 4.5 months per ...year. As might be expected, seasonal markets that were open for 6 or fewer months per year attracted fewer vendors and generated less revenue than farmers markets open 7 months or more. Markets open 6 months or less reported an average of 25 vendors, with sales of $20,770 per month, and serving 565 customers weekly. Markets open 7 months or more reported an average of 51 vendors, with $57,290 in monthly market sales and serving 942 customers weekly. Year-round markets reported more than three times the sales of markets operating 6 months or less, had more than twice the number of vendors, and slightly more than six times the number of weekly customers.
On the other hand, seasonal farmers markets that operated for 7 or more months performed similarly to markets that were open 12 months per year. Year-round markets reported an average of 58 vendors, had monthly market sales of $69,497, and served 3,578 customers weekly. Location appears to be a critical factor in market performance. Most market managers reporting high monthly sales were in densely populated urban areas. The most successful farmers markets in terms of sales were located on the coasts. The Far West and Mid-Atlantic regions reported average monthly sales of at least twice that of other regions—$56,742 and $41,452 respectively. The sales of the remaining regions clustered around $23,000 a month. The number of customers per week, as reported by region, somewhat mirrored monthly sales per market regionally. The Far West and Mid-Atlantic regions were again the top two regions, reporting 1,964 and 974 customers per week respectively. The North Central Region was a close third, reporting 856 customers weekly, and the remaining regions around 700 customers per week.
Markets that sold organic products reported larger numbers of weekly customers, larger number of vendors, and larger monthly market sales at their markets. Both seasonal and year-round markets that sold organic products performed better than markets that did not. Seasonal markets that sold organic products reported average monthly market sales of $34,715 and 854 customers per week. Seasonal markets that didn’t sell organic products reported $11,812 in monthly market sales and served 394 customers per week. Similar results were reported by year-round markets—those that sold organic products reported monthly market sales of $92,349 and 4,344 customers weekly; those that did not reported $41,584 and 2,590 customers. Seventy-one percent of markets that sold organic products were located in urban areas, compared with only 55 percent of markets that did not.4 These relationships held true for markets that sold organic products regionally, except for the Northeast region that reported markets without organic products were more often located in urban areas than markets that sold organic products. However, in spite of this one inconsistency, Northeast markets that sold organic products had more customers and vendors, and higher monthly market sales than markets in other regions across the Nation.
Government programs had varying degrees of impact on vendor sales at farmers markets. The Women, Infants, and Children Farmers Market Nutrition Program (WIC FMNP) had the largest effect, showing average monthly sales of $1,744 nationwide and 61 percent participation. Senior Farmers Market Nutrition program (SFMNP) average sales were $1,004 per month and 45 percent of markets reported they accepted SFMNP vouchers. The average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) sales, which utilize electronic benefits transfer (EBT), were a distant third at $279 a month and only 7 percent of markets reported accepting EBT cards. Clearly the WIC FMNP had the greatest impact on vendor sales, both nationwide and regionally.
The growing retail desire for exclusive and specialized food products offers new marketing opportunities for small and medium-sized food suppliers that understand the new world of food merchandising ...and are capable of delivering food products that satisfy commercial requirements for quality, innovation, and value. This document provides an overview of the changing retail landscape and identifies some of the characteristics associated with successful food retailing. It is designed to help smaller scale food producers and processors develop profitable business strategies and identify customers likely to appreciate their unique products.
This publication addresses two major trends changing retail food marketing—a move toward differentiation as a marketing strategy and a simultaneous shift towards vertical integration between food suppliers and buyers. It examines the ramifications of these developments for the smaller scale food supplier and identifies strategies for remaining competitive in this environment.
Food insecurity is a potentially important barrier to the success of antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs in resource-limited settings. We undertook a longitudinal study in rural Uganda to estimate ...the associations between food insecurity and HIV treatment outcomes.
Longitudinal cohort study.
Participants were from the Uganda AIDS Rural Treatment Outcomes study and were followed quarterly for blood draws and structured interviews. We measured food insecurity with the validated Household Food Insecurity Access Scale. Our primary outcomes were: ART nonadherence (adherence <90%) measured by visual analog scale; incomplete viral load suppression (>400 copies/ml); and low CD4 T-cell count (<350 cells/μl). We used generalized estimating equations to estimate the associations, adjusting for socio-demographic and clinical variables.
We followed 438 participants for a median of 33 months; 78.5% were food insecure at baseline. In adjusted analyses, food insecurity was associated with higher odds of ART nonadherence adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 1.56, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.10-2.20, P < 0.05, incomplete viral suppression (AOR 1.52, 95% CI 1.18-1.96, P < 0.01), and CD4 T-cell count less than 350 (AOR 1.47, 95% CI 1.24-1.74, P < 0.01). Adding adherence as a covariate to the latter two models removed the association between food insecurity and viral suppression, but not between food insecurity and CD4 T-cell count.
Food insecurity is longitudinally associated with poor HIV outcomes in rural Uganda. Intervention research is needed to determine the extent to which improved food security is causally related to improved HIV outcomes and to identify the most effective policies and programs to improve food security and health.
Several methods are used to generate a limit of detection for organic pollutants measured by gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS); all have theoretical and practical drawbacks. The current ...project investigated two common existing methods (statistical and empirical) for applicability to chromatographic properties from real samples, comparing these with a new proposed method using procedural blanks to estimate a minimum detectable peak area. Weaknesses of all three methods are discussed. The proposed method was superior to other examined methods in that it provided analyte-specific limits of detection linked to the recovery of mass-labeled internal standards for every analyte within every sample. Other identified quality assurance benefits included the following: enhanced protection against false positives; providing a sensitivity performance metric across batch, analyst, and instrument; enabling chemists with discretionary decisions specific to every analyte regarding detectability and interferences; and some strengths of both statistical and empirical techniques without major drawbacks of either. In marine sediment samples, the proposed method of calculating the limit of detection increased reporting of trace level (low- to subppb) GC-MS data for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) by up to 400% compared with the statistical method.
The GABA deficit hypothesis remains one of the most compelling explanations for the information processing impairments in schizophrenia. However, much of the supportive evidence has been derived from ...post-mortem studies, whereas in vivo studies have largely yielded inconsistent results. We undertook this single voxel proton magnetic resonance (MRS) GABA study to test in a sample of recent onset patients the replicability of our prior finding of reduced early visual cortex GABA in schizophrenia. We also examined the possibility that antipsychotics could represent a significant confound by studying a small subsample of antipsychotic naïve subjects. 23 adults with recent onset schizophrenia and a demographically matched sample of 31 healthy control subjects underwent MRS using a MEGA PRESS sequence on a 3T MR scanner to measure GABA concentration in early visual cortex. To control for in-scanner head movement confounding the results, we quantified the amount of head movement during GABA scans to identify and exclude from analysis scans with excessive movement. Patients demonstrated significantly reduced GABA levels compared to control subjects, p = 0.029. GABA levels did not differ significantly between patients who were antipsychotic naïve (n = 7) and patients treated with antipsychotics. This replication in a recent onset sample suggest that diminished GABA in the visual cortex is a reliable finding, present in early phase of illness and not confounded by illness chronicity.
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