Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Farmers' Markets/Farm Markets
Fig. 4.2. A farmers' market sign at the Swindon Farmers' Market, Swindon,
Wiltshire, UK.
Think food tourism and farmers' markets/farm markets must be one
of the most important retail strategies that you would find in the food
tourism mix.
Farmers' markets have been around since people started trading in
Mesopotamia (in what is now Iraq). Local farmers would bring their produce
and animals to the town market and trading would commence. This style
of trading carried on through the centuries with the village or town square
being used for the weekly farmers' market.
It is believed the first American farm market was developed by
Governor John Winthrop in 1634 in Boston; this was followed by Market
Street in Philadelphia in 1693. In France and other European coun-
tries there are street markets, as well as covered marketplaces, where
farmers and purveyors still sell their produce. In 1997 the first new-style
farmers' market in the UK was developed in Bath, Somerset. These mar-
kets focused on local food with a small amount of added value food
products. Retail skills were often limited, but the passion of the owners
made sure that the majority of those markets prospered over the next
two decades. Since then the number of markets in the UK has grown to
over 550 nationwide.
 
 
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