Understanding Food Access at Nourished Cities Green Ridge Farmer’s Market

The data described and analyzed in this paper answers the question of what social, economic and sustainable impacts farmer’s markets have on urban spaces. Additionally, this research seeks to focus on access to these impacts in terms of who is able to benefit from these potential positive impacts, why some may be excluded and how this issue can be improved to improve accessibility to benefits. The issue of exclusion arises primarily from the fact that the average visitor of a farmer’s market (FM) is a middle-aged white woman (Bubinas 2011; Robinson and Farmer 2017, 29). Moreover, existing research argues that FMs do not necessarily offer an effective alternative food network for low-income communities of color (Lambert-Pennington and Hicks 2016). However, as FMs have the potential to increase access to food and encourage sustainable practices, access becomes a central question of my research due to the fact that communities living in food apartheid or areas negatively impacted by environmental injustice are often low-income communities of color. Thus, how can FMs become more accessible to communities in need of solutions to the ease of food access? Sage, et al. find that FMs’ “ability to address food security for those most in need of improved access is yet to be seen,” but my research seeks to contribute to solving this problem (2013, 1273).