FRESHFARM’s Market Tracker:
Methods for Farmers Markets to Collect Sales Data
ISSUE
Market organizers and managers experience significant time and resource constraints. These constraints were only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, where some markets were able to operate under strict guidelines that more time and resources to operating the markets. In this context, data collection may seem less significant. However, data collection is valuable in managing and advocating for the presence of farmer's markets
INNOVATION
Market Tracker is a Google Sheets database that FRESHFARM uses to collect sales data at the farmers markets that it manages. The database also creates other charts that enable FRESHFARM to evaluate the composition of vendors, available products, and currencies being used at its farmers markets.
OUTCOME
The Market Tracker improves accounting procedures, reduces the data collection burden for market staff, and enables information sharing among the farmers markets in their network. FRESHFARM’s aspirational goal is to offer Market Tracker as an open-source database to farmers market organizations across the United States.
