You may have seen us around town at local festivals, farmers markets, and even at the library. We are easy to spot because we are all wearing matching aprons and standing next to a big board with colored dots stuck to it. What are we doing? We are conducting consumer surveys.

The Eat Local Project is on a mission to get people to eat more fruits and vegetables, and in order to make our mission become a reality, we have to know about the buying habits of people in our community. For two years, we have been collecting and analyzing data. We are not done analyzing the data, but I thought it would be useful to share some of our findings.

The good news is that the news is good if you are a local farmer. One of the surveys we conducted gathered data on local fruit and vegetable buying habits. Here are some of the highlights and some unsolicited advice that you, as a local farmer, may want to employ to boost your sales:

• When asked how they define “local,” 69.9% of respondents said that their county and adjacent counties are what they consider to be local. This says to me that if you are selling at a farmers market or in local grocery stores, you'd better make sure that your banners, signage, and price tags all focus on communicating that your farm is in the same or an adjacent county, and you are a member of the community. Your message needs to be very clear: my farm is local.
• 76.5% or respondents buy locally grown fruits and vegetables every week! The customer will come back if you keep them happy, so keep working on those customer service skills and finding out what else your farm can provide to this dedicated group of people.
• What is the main reason people don't buy more locally grown fruits and vegetables? 38.5% of respondents said convenience. This is a tough nut to crack, but maybe rather than doing another farmers market, you could start selling to local stores so that people will have the convenience of shopping on their schedules, rather than just on the farmers' market days.
• The primary reason people buy locally grown fruits and vegetables is almost a three way tie!

o   62% to support local farmers

o   59.8% for the taste and quality

o   58.7% for personal health and environmental quality

The useful thing here is that farmers need to hit all three of these messages in their marketing. The good news is that all three are easily blended: the reasons don't oppose each other, and combining them sends an effective, targeted message.

Often, when the Eat Local team is out in the community we give away samples. Sometimes these samples are cut-up fruits and vegetables, and sometimes the samples are prepared dishes like grilled summer vegetables, peach-berry smoothies, or massaged kale salad. To find out about the effectiveness of sampling and recipes, we did a survey. Some of these results are below:

• 60.4% of people purchased the fruit or vegetable we were sampling after they had tried a sample. That is a huge increase, and just screams that farmers need to start sampling if they haven't, and all need to sample regularly. Who couldn't use a 60% increase in sales?
• 86.5% of respondents said that recipe cards make it easier for them to cook and eat locally grown fruits and vegetables. Awesome! So get those recipes that highlight your crops out on your table. If you don't have recipes, or don't know where to start, don't worry: we've got you covered. We have beautiful cards for many of our local crops with great pictures and yummy recipes on them, and they are yours for the asking. All you need to do is send me an email and I will take it from there: jimmuck@ucdavis.edu

How is that for a bunch of good news for our local agricultural economy? I hope you can take some the ideas presented above and put them into action this season. Winter is a great time to refine your business and marketing plans, so take some time to think up some ways you can use the results of our surveys to increase your sales and help ensure the success of your farm.