Please enjoy these reports related to local food that we have contributed to, along with partners.

1. Local Farm-Raised Fish
With a team of researchers and funding from Sea Grant, we conducted a statewide survey of Wisconsin consumers to better understand their attitudes toward farm-raised fish.  You can read the full report here.

Additionally, we conducted a statewide survey of Wisconsin fish farmers to better understand the needs of people working in the aquaculture industry.  You can read the full report here.

2. CSA Member Recruitment and Retention
We worked with FairShare CSA Coalition to survey current and former community supported agriculture (CSA) members. You can read the full report or browse the research briefs directed at more specific audiences.

• Download the report: Marketing Recommendations for Community Supported Agriculture: Member Recruitment and Retention (PDF, 27 pages, 3.5MB)
• Download the farmer brief: Marketing Recommendations for CSA Farmers: A CSA Research Brief (PDF, 2 pages, 442 KB)
• Download the workplace CSA brief: Healthy Food at Work: A CSA Research Brief (PDF, 2 pages, 418 KB)
• Download the consumer brief: Healthy and Local Food: A CSA Research Brief (PDF, 2 pages, 446 KB)

3. Social Media Marketing for Direct to Market Farms
We conducted a field test of Facebook targeted advertising using four different conceptually informed messages designed to drive traffic to community supported agriculture (CSA) farmer websites with the goal of increasing sales of CSA shares.The purpose of the research brief is to offer CSA farmers evidence-based recommendations for which types of messages would be most effective for marketing CSA businesses online. Find the brief here.

4. Promoting farmers markets
We conducted a survey of Wisconsin farmers market managers in addition to interviews. A peer-reviewed article from the Journal of Food Distribution Research examining how best to support farmers markets depending on the type of community is available here.

You can also find two reports geared toward a non-academic audience, one which focuses on market managers’ suggestions for how best to promote markets and is available here, and one which focuses on on the survey, available here.

5. Wisconsin consumers and local food
We surveyed Wisconsinites in 2015 about their perspective on local food and their purchasing habits. Below, find our report that includes appendices with average responses for consumers in different regions of Wisconsin. Also available are summaries of findings with an audience of farmers mind, a summary with an audience of retailers and restaurants in mind, and links to peer-reviewed articles based on this work.

• Download the report: Wisconsin Consumers & Local Food (PDF, 46 pages, 1.3MB)
• Download the farmer summary: Farmer Summary (PDF, 4 pages, 593 KB)
• Download the retailer and restaurant summary: Retailer & Restaurant Summary (PDF, 4 pages, 597 KB)
• Find our article in the journal Appetite here
• Find our article in the journal Agriculture and Human Values here

6. Testing messages about local food: A service learning project from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls Agricultural Economics Department
Students at the University of River-Falls created marketing messages about local food and tested the appeal of those messages with customers in grocery stores. Read their results in this fact sheet about the project.

• Download the factsheet: Service Learning at UW-River Falls (PDF, 1 page, 4.5 MB)

7. Local produce labeling evaluation: An evaluation of local produce labels in grocery stores
A pilot test examined how consumers respond to different types of local food labels in two grocery stores in Wisconsin. Messages related to food miles, farm name and location, and other attributes of local food were compared.

• Download the evaluation: Local Produce Labeling (PDF, 3 pages, 434 KB)