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2018 Autumn | Agriculture and Food Systems, Environmental Justice

Assessing Access to Farmers Markets: Improving Barrier Identification

Student(s):

Nicholas Brown

Program or Department(s):

  • Program on the Environment
  • University of Washington

Site supervisor(s):

Taylor Moore

Partner(s):

  • Sno-Valley Tilth

Faculty advisor(s):

Eric Morel, Department of English, University of Washington

Farmers markets are becoming increasingly important in Food justice research and policy, as a unique opportunity to scale down food systems and provide fresher and more nutritional produce potentially at a lower cost. Federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are available to use at Farmers Markets but only account for 0.032% of all SNAP users spending. This proportion seems remarkably small and required investigating as to it was this small out of choice or due to barriers to using farmers markets. Purchasing produce is one of the most common ways people can participate in environmental issues on a weekly or daily basis and as such it is important that if people care to buy organic or local produce that they have the option to do so. I set out to investigate potential barriers to farmers markets and if they existed what are some potential solutions?