Farmer's Market Week

All this week has been National Farmer's Market Week and if you are like me, I love to take the family to the market. It's kind of like going to the fair with so many things to see and do, live music and the arts and crafts. But by far, my favorite thing is the fresh fruits and vegetables. In my area there are no less that five markets to visit. Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator Anne Alonzo says USDA is encouraging people to sign up for three new directories to strengthen local and regional food systems.

ALONSO: The first one involves community supported agriculture and that's a farm or group of farms that offer consumers regular deliveries of local, fresh food products. The second director will deal with on-farm market meaning a single farm who sells ag products directly to consumers and the third deals with food hubs, a place where small and medium sized farmers can combine their products and allowing them to sell in scale to bigger markets that they couldn't necessarily crack by themselves.

These directories will help both farmers and consumers find more outlets for fresh product.

ALONSO: What we're asking folks to do is to access USDALocalFoodDirectories.com. They can put in their information which we need and they can also search around for other information and so again, USDALocalFoodDirectories.com. The directory now lists more than 8.268 markets which is an increase of 78% since 2008.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.