A three-year project to collect baseline data on Minnesota's local and regional agricultural markets has concluded, and the data, along with a new strategic framework for market development, is now available for public use.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture, the University of Minnesota, and members of the Statewide Cooperative Partnership for local and regional markets piloted the data report and action framework, which can be accessed through the Statewide Cooperative Partnership website. The Department of Agriculture and UMN also hosted a webinar to present the findings, which can be viewed on the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's YouTube channel.
“We have never before had this level of information to guide our work on local and regional markets,” said Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Peterson. Support farmers and producers, retailers, public institutions and consumers in Minnesota.
Funded by a three-year grant from the USDA federal State Marketing Improvement Program, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, the University of Minnesota and more than 40 partner organizations surveyed Minnesota growers, supply chain partners, and consumers in 2022 to supplement data from USDA's National Agricultural Statistics. Surveyed. Service Agricultural Census.
“Data from our survey and outreach help tell a more holistic story of the experiences of small and medium-sized farmers in Minnesota and how to effectively support them in a structured way for the first time,” said lead researcher Hikaru Peterson. for the project and professor of applied economics in the UMN College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. “We look forward to using these findings to expand collaborative efforts to strengthen Minnesota’s local and regional markets.”