Farmers markets are perceived by some as places that sell expensive food and are exclusive to high-income groups in the community

New research looking at the relationship between local farmers markets and diet quality

Professor Harry West of the CRPR and Exeter Food Studies Network has been awarded an ESRC Impact Cultivation award as Co-I, alongside Dr Luciana Torquati as PI and Good Food Exeter as an external partner.

The title of the project is ‘local farmers market to improve diet quality and health of Exeter community’ and the aims of the project are to:

• Develop new collaborations between the university of Exeter and Good Food Exeter
• Identify strategies to reach low-income groups in Exeter that do not require face-to-face engagement and are Covid secure
• Assess the impact of farmers market on diet perceptions and diet quality of its users
• Identify implementation determinants that could allow the scale-up of farm-to-fork strategies to make agro-ecological and local food more accessible to lower-income groups in Devon.

This project stems from a previous ESRC Impact Cultivation Award led by Dr Rebecca Sandover and Professor Harry West (‘Food poverty in Exeter: measuring the impacts of universal credit and building a responsive network of support’).

The project will run until April 2021.

Date: 10 February 2021