Farmers’ Market Actors, Dynamics, and Attributes: A Bibliometric Study

: Farmers’ markets aim to bring producers and consumers together under direct marketing schemes, also known as alternative food networks, for local and sustainable production and consumption of food. A number of studies concerning this subject have been published, however, as yet no updated reviews exist that might allow us to understand the trends in research on farmers’ markets. The objective of this study was to examine the farmers’ market literature using bibliometric tools. A total of 438 peer-reviewed publications, indexed in the abstract and citation meta-database Scopus (Elsevier®), for the period of 1979 to September 24, 2018, were considered. In the second phase, publications in the area of medicine were excluded, resulting in 295 publications being analyzed for the same period. The results showed that these publications focused on three main areas: markets, health programs, and food safety. Upon exclusion of the medical publications, the remaining works focused on farmers’ market actors, dynamics, and attributes: vendors (producers and others), consumers, the community, and supporting actors and institutions (government, NGOs, individuals). Therefore, it is concluded that there is no single type of farmers’ market, nor of farmers’ market vendors or consumers. This makes the reproduction of such spaces difﬁcult, especially when the goals are to beneﬁt local production systems or the nutrition of the local community.


Introduction
Farmers' markets emerged as a possible means to bring producers together with consumers under direct marketing, known as alternative food networks (AFN) [1][2][3]. This was done for several reasons: to allow producers to retain the profits resulting from the sale of their products, and to benefit the consumers, who are able to obtain fresh products directly from the production unit [4]. There are various advantages to this system; it allows producers to sell their products to their customers and to be in direct contact with them, and it also enables the producers to earn sufficient income and increases the number of socially and environmentally sustainable food systems [5]. For the consumer, the advantage is access to fresh, high-quality, healthy, highly nutritious, and locally available products [6]. There are several studies that focused on the relevance of farmers' markets in the support of local food systems, comprising 235 articles (79.7%), 30 book chapters (10.2%), 15 reviews (5.1%), 5 conference papers (1.7%), 2 editorials (0.7%), 2 articles in press, 2 notes, 2 small surveys, 1 book, and 1 letter to the editor.

Content Analysis
The software VOSviewer version 1.6.9 (Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands) was used [35] for science mapping analysis. An analysis of co-occurrence of keywords and academic terms in the titles and abstracts of the 438 and 295 publications was performed; this analysis shows only elements connected with other elements. To obtain the mapping and clustering of terms, the association strength (AS) normalization method was used, with a resolution of 1.00, visualization scale at 100% with total link strength (TLS) weight, 50% label size variation, and 30% kernel width. The full counting method was selected, with the number of records for each term ≥10, and a minimum cluster size of 15 [36]. With the retained terms, maps for visualization of the network were created. The algorithm was designed so that co-occurring terms were positioned closer to each other, and larger bubbles represented terms that occurred more frequently. Terms that were irrelevant to the map were deleted [37].

Performance Analysis
The record comprised 438 documents from 1979 to 24 September 2018. The distribution of the publications is shown in Figure 1. The most significant number of publications on this topic starts in 2007, and maintains steady growth until reaching its peak in 2017 (44). Farmers' markets have been important initiatives for the United States government since the 1970s; however, most of the studies before the year 2000 were based on articles from the popular press [15]. The increase in the number of published articles in peer-reviewed journals indicates that this research topic has been recently studied under a more scientific approach. As mentioned before, another reason for the increase in publications is that farmers' markets have become an initiative that is followed globally, so more international cases are documented. Of the total number of documents, 328 had been cited (75% of the total), accumulating a total of 5840 citations. There were seven publications that had more than 100 citations (2%), 24 had between 50 and 99 citations (5%), 117 had between 10 and 49 citations (27%), 132 had between 2 and 9 citations (30%), and 50 publications received one citation (11%). The mean number of citations was 13.3 per document for the period analyzed. Table 1 shows the 10 major journals, countries or regions, and institutes that are publishing on topics related to farmers' markets. The five journals with the largest number of publications on the subject are: Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition, Journal of Extension, Preventing Chronic Disease, Agriculture and Human Values, and British Food Journal. Two journals place emphasis on nutrition and medicine; the publications in these journals result from the evaluation of farmers' markets as a method for improvement of the quality of the nutrition of the population, and from the analysis of the impact of public policies, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Pilot Program, the Farmers Market Access Project, monetary matched incentives, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the New York City Health Bucks Program, Philly Food Bucks, and the Food Assistance Program. The rest of the journals analyze vendors, consumers, extensionists, dynamics in the markets, and the sale of organic products, among other issues.
With regard to countries or regions, it can be seen that the United States was the country with the highest number of contributions (266); this is a result of laws that encourage the establishment of farmers' markets as well as the various health programs related to the topic. There were smaller numbers of publications by researchers from Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and another 34 countries. With regard to affiliation, 160 institutions were listed, of which the United States universities represent the highest proportion, with 25 of the 30 major institutions whose academics publish on the topic. The institute with the largest number of publications was

Science Mapping
Term co-occurrence word analysis provides an overview of the trends in research, as it reflects the topics covered. The analysis was performed using VOSviewer software. The VOSviewer results established 779 terms; of these, those with occurrences greater than 10 were retained, and generic terms related to the process of research (review, introduction, sample) were excluded. Thus, 94 items were retained and organized into 3 clusters with 2966 links (Figure 2). The three clusters were as follows: cluster one, relating to consumers and farmers' markets in general; cluster two, relating to health programs; and cluster three, relating to the concept of food safety. When the analysis was performed after excluding the publications related to health, with a total of 295 publications, the VOSviewer results showed 68 terms; of these, those that had occurrences greater than 10 were kept, and generic terms related to the process of research (sample, farmers market, problem, literature, purpose, interview, participant, case study) were excluded. In total, 60 items were retained and distributed into 4 clusters with 1300 links (Figure 3). The first cluster relates to shoppers, the second to the manager and support programs, the third cluster deals with the product, and the axis of cluster four is the community. In the case of shoppers or consumers, the focus has been on understanding their motivations, attitudes, and interests, which allows for insights and segmentation. The manager has been related to access and participation at the market, the uses of the areas, and the public programs they manage. The product cluster integrates research related to prices, information, marketing, products, variety, and vendors as factors related to success. The final cluster includes topics linked to health and sustainability. The findings show the relevance of consumers, vendors, the community, and the manner in which the market is managed.

Discussion
This study used bibliometric tools in order to provide further understanding regarding research on farmers' markets. The results show that this research topic has been studied in three major aspects: the market and consumers, population health support programs, and food safety. The first major aspect is divided into five areas: consumer, community, product, administrators, and support programs.
Based on the results obtained, Figure 4 shows a partial framework for understanding farmers' markets. It does not consider population health support programs or food safety publications, yet these publications can be categorized under government actions that influence both the community and the rest of the components of the farmers' markets. The important components of the system represent the starting point: vendors, intrinsic attributes of the market, consumers, support organizations/institutions/individuals, and the community, which relate to all of the components at different levels. In the case of vendors or sellers, studies have documented that markets do not only have the participation of farmers, but also food, groceries, prepared food, and even arts and crafts [59]. As the researchers had focused mainly on consumers, there is a lack of systematic information regarding the proportion of farmers compared to other type of sellers-under such conditions, should these markets should still be considered farmers' markets? One of the main reasons for the reduced participation of farmers might be the seasonality and availability of local fruits and vegetables, allowing the participation of food processors, some of them being both processors and farmers, as a strategy for income diversification [38].
On the other side of the framework are the consumers, where their characteristics and motivations have been well studied. The third main component is the community that supports the farmers' market. A combination of these three main components define the markets' attributes, which gives them particular traits. Approaching farmers' markets under a system view is not common in literature, so there is a research gap. Some characteristics of each of these components follow individually.

Intrinsic Attributes of the Market
Farmers' markets are public areas where fruit and vegetable producers gather to sell their produce directly to consumers; unlike supermarkets, which are structured, closed spaces, farmers' markets do not show defined patterns. One of their characteristics is that the consumers believe that these markets have a special atmosphere, as they are considered friendly, personal, and smaller places compared to supermarkets [60], so they are considered to be more focused on people [2]. This aspect is reinforced by the manner in which the vendors are attired: jeans and t-shirts, which fits the stereotype of producers, and it is common for the consumers to ask the producers for advice [57].
Some of the attributes of the markets that have been analyzed are the origin of the products (local distinctiveness vs. no distinctiveness of origin), the type of property (public vs. private), and location (urban, semi-urban, or rural) [28]. Other aspects that have been documented are the convenience factors for the consumer: distance (time); hours and days of operation; size (number of stands); type of items offered (vegetables and fruits, meat products, bread, fresh meat, dairy products, handicrafts); and, whether there are picnic areas and live music [61,62].

Vendors
According to the literature, the majority of participants in farmers' markets are agricultural producers of fruits and vegetables who have permanent stalls in the market; however, in some cases it has been documented that in larger markets, up to 40% of the stalls offer non-agricultural products, such as handicrafts [13,63]. One of the reasons why processed products are sold is to provide the consumer with greater variety; otherwise, the markets would be limited to the seasonality of primary production and would lose viability [49]. Furthermore, it has been shown that vendors prefer to participate in larger markets that might attract more consumers [64], which becomes a reason to accept vendors offering other types of products than fruits and vegetables. The number of vendors in the markets is highly variable and can be between 20 and 100 [63].

Consumers
This section can be divided into two major sub-concepts: characteristics and motivations (Table 3). It has been established that the consumers who frequent these markets in the United States are generally Caucasian and that they are older, more educated, and earn a higher income than the average city resident, and that women attend more frequently than men [57,65]. For consumers who are interested in purchasing local foods, price is not a limiting factor [66]; consumers usually travel a maximum of 10 kilometers in order to shop in these types of markets, and they are described as frequent customers who tend to go to the farmers market every week [67][68][69][70][71][72]. As a result of the limitations and unpredictability in the availability of products at this type of market, consumers tend to complement their supermarket shopping by shopping in farmers' markets, which they do in an impulsive manner [57].
The main motivations for consumers to go to farmers' markets are listed in Table 3. The table was based on the most-cited articles that focused on consumer characteristics and motivations. The possibility to interact with farmers and vendors as well as the freshness of the products are the main factors, followed by quality, support of the local economy, and to a lesser extent the search for prepared food or arts, crafts, and prepared food. A more recent study based on consumer experience through self-expression on social networks found that consumers valued six major characteristics: #Organic, #Fresh, #Food, #Local, #Vegan, and #Healthy [73], indicating that some consumers had introduced new tendencies in their food choices according to a vegan and zero waste lifestyle.
Another one of the contributions that have been made is consumer typology. For example, McGrath, Sherry Jr and Heisley [57] classify them by the time of day they arrive to the market and by their behavior-whether they shop right away or socialize first, and Hunt [56] divides them according to their motivations-lifestylers, seasonal shoppers, and utilitarians. Pilař et al. [73] classify them according to their orientations. Therefore, there is not a single accepted typology of farmers' market consumer.

Government/Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO)/Individual Support
The internal organization of the markets varies in the literature; according to McGrath, Sherry Jr and Heisley [57], the vendors with the most seniority tend to establish themselves in selling locations near the center of the market, while new and sporadic vendors are concentrated on the outskirts near the street. These authors have documented that there is a certain degree of competition among vendors and that they are not formally organized; any dispute is brought before the director of the market or the city's Farmers Market Commission. In countries such as the United States, the markets are regulated by municipal councils, which issue the vendor permits and resolve disputes between vendors [57]. In other countries, the government does not keep records regarding farmers' markets and it does not regulate them. In many of these cases, non-profit organizations monitor and promote such initiatives, for example NALOK in the Czech Republic [63].
In some cases, neither the vendors nor the organizers of the markets want to invest in the development of the market, so most of the initiatives depend on a small number of enthusiasts who set out to solve problems related to infrastructure, parking, selling space, or space rent payment [63]; this creates problems with "free riders", i.e., non-paying beneficiaries [27].

The Community
The community aspect has been dealt with in these studies as the relationship between the producers and the well-being of the community, since these markets contribute to the sustainability of local food systems by promoting the viability of the production units, for example by increasing the number of jobs and increasing income from sales [7,15,63]. They also contribute to the improvement of public health through the availability to the community of natural and healthy foods [65]. In addition, they are social places where people can interact and develop a sense of community, which is another aspect that is important to the local authorities [64]. Thus, the concept of community is presented in several ways; with respect to the producers, to the consumers, and to the interactions between the two groups [75].
Farmers' markets were created with the idea of providing spaces for direct sale from the producer to the consumer, and they were started in communities where the interactions would promote collective identification, based on common interests and needs, creating a sense of belonging [76]. However, it has been observed that sometimes these markets do not work because producers do not participate, so there is a lack of vendors which makes the market unattractive for customers [77]; thus, they do not become places where the producers actually manage to form a community with the consumers as expected.
Another aspect of the term "community" that has emerged in previous studies is the sense of community that is generated within the same market dynamic. According to McGrath, Sherry Jr and Heisley [57], farmers' markets are socially constructed spaces where the producers interact in different ways; they support each other when one of them has problems and they can even act as collaborators, not always as competitors. This dynamic is not observed in supermarkets, differentiating the farmers' markets somewhat from the massive retail sale involved in the former.

Applied Theories
Most of the studies on farmers' markets are qualitative and descriptive, lacking a theoretical framework. However, some studies have used farmers' markets in order to analyze and discuss theoretical concepts. The following are some examples of the theories addressed: cultural domination, e.g., spaces dominated by Caucasians [51], embeddedness [49,56], conventions theory, e.g., social construction of the definition of food quality [2], feminist theory on the body and racism [55], social networks [78], governance [79], social support, exchange, and resilience [80], transaction cost analysis [81], and planned behavior [23]. Invariably, farmers' markets are good scenarios where it is possible to assess or even develop theories, so it is likely that in the future this type of study will be more common.

Conclusions
Farmers' markets are an initiative that has been implemented at the global level but not uniformly so; some place greater emphasis on agricultural producers while others offer a variety of products, which is evidence for the assertion that there is no single type of farmers market. These spaces differ from supermarkets in the atmosphere that they provide to their consumers, who shop there for various reasons, from buying fresh and nutritious products to socializing with vendors. This allows us to understand that there is not a single type of consumer at these markets, either. The motivations for shopping at farmers' markets cannot be described as the same as the reasons why consumers go to a supermarket; it is for this reason that they have continued to be an option for shopping in several countries, as well as a subject of research that remains relevant.
In recent decades, researchers have advanced in studying the social and non-economic factors that impact farmers' markets, but the main focus has been on their economic impact and profiling the consumer. From the publications available, we can conclude that farmers' markets are white, urban, middle-class oriented spaces. Originally, they played an important role in providing raw fresh fruits and vegetables, and nowadays they also provide nutritious and homemade prepared, packaged, and ready to-eat food for urban and rural communities. Still, they need more public-private councils to facilitate planning of market operations and increase opportunities for the attendance of new customers. These spaces tend to rely on volunteer managers who must devote their time to operating the market, becoming a central piece for its success or failure.
An important limitation of this study was that the publications related to state-funded public health actions and food assistance programs associated with farmers' markets were not included in the analysis. In the United States, these programs have expanded farmers' markets and allowed low-income minorities to attend these spaces. The way this type of consumer interacts with vendors, as well as the social impact on shaping the space compared to a "traditional" consumer, should also be discussed in future research [10]. As this study concentrates on reviewing the literature from 1979 to 2018 in order to create a partial framework for understanding farmers' markets, it mainly considered the most-cited articles that were generally not the most recent contributions. Therefore, a continued review focusing only on the latest contributions under a systemic view will be important in order to increase our contemporary knowledge of alternative food networks for local and sustainable production and consumption of food.
Promotion of farmers' markets by policymakers has been a good way to improve the availability of fresh and nutritious food for communities, yet there are some issues to consider. One of them is to ensure food safety regulations; this has become an important issue for governments and society, combined with a reduced availability of resources for inspection and market deregulation, as well as an increase in prepared, packaged, ready to-eat products available at these spaces [13]. Another important issue is that governments need to help educate the consumer regarding the differences between alternative agriculture and large-scale or conventional agriculture; this will increase the demand for more nutritious and environment-friendly food [82]. Finally, public policy should attempt to promote a green economy, and one way to achieve this is to connect small farmers with alternative food networks.