UC Davis

Despite an abundance of research on farmers markers and alternative food networks the literature lacks a focus on 1) farmers market managers and market organizations as key intermediaries within these networks; 2) the role of rules, regulations, and standards in shaping how farmers markets look, feel, and operate; 3) the mechanisms behind social embeddedness at farmers markets; and 4) how different actors within these networks (including market managers and market customers) define and understand these spaces. This dissertation draws widely from the literature on alternative food networks, agrifood standards and regulation, market making, and embeddedness in order to explore these questions. The findings challenge common assumptions about sustainability and embeddedness in alternative food networks and highlight the overlooked role of market intermediaries in shaping these spaces.

This three-article dissertation is structured as follows. The first chapter, published in Journal of Rural Studies, draws upon a novel dataset of 87 farmers market vendor regulatory documents in order to investigate the content of farmers market handbooks, including standards and regulations for vendors (which codify marketplace inclusions and exclusions), as well as the explicitly stated values and goals of farmers market organizations. The second chapter centers the perspectives of farmers market managers as active agents that shape the social, symbolic, and physical construction of alternative food systems. Drawing upon interviews with 30 farmers market managers, this paper interrogates the roles of market making, market intermediaries, and standards in shaping these spaces. Finally, the third chapter uses qualitative and quantitative analysis of a survey of over 1,500 farmers market customers in order to examine the behaviors, expectations, and values of farmers market customers.