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Chapter 5, “When Things Don’t Work: Some Insights into Why Farmers’ Markets Close,” reveals a dark side to the heady period of market growth we are experiencing. Although markets are growing in number, a very high number of them fail. In addition, farmers’ markets experience significant rates of manager turnover. Underlying causes include a wide disparity in revenue to provide for market operations. This disparity impacts the ability of market organizers to hire labor to perform functions that help grow and sustain markets. Smaller markets often experience a circular condition in which they cannot attract sufficient customers because they do not have sufficient vendors, but they cannot attract sufficient vendors because they do not have sufficient customers.
Chapter 6, “It’s Harder Than It Looks: The Agro-Social-Economic-Regulatory Ecology of Oregon’s Farmers’ Markets,” utilizes elements from the previous chapters with additional data to create a synthesis of research findings. Individual farmers’ markets appear and operate in the manner they do because of many minute adjustments made by market managers to uniquely adapt a market to influences from the natural and political environments. Manager-determined traits of successful markets are used, and an ecological framework explores the viable adaptations of farmers’ markets to physical and political environmental influences. A visual model is constructed of the ecology within which farmers’ markets function.
Chapter 7, “Concluding Observations and Recommendations,” provides a general discussion of the research and some of the broad themes that emerged, summarizes the major research findings within an ecological theory framework, and offers recommendations to enhance the viability of individual farmers’ markets and of farmers’ markets collectively.
Lastly, for variety, two vignettes of a farmers’ market offer a taste of a market in operation during different seasons. Presented in a stream-of-consciousness style, the vignettes serve as bookends to the data-laden chapters.