Describe about the Business Capstone Project for Farmers Market.
Background of the study
The Australian farmer’s market has been experiencing a steady growth over the past 7 years. As per the data of 2004 to 2011, the number of Australia’s registered farmers markets have increased twice that ensures a stable market condition in the future. In the span of 30 years, the registered number of farmers in US increased from 1700 to 8250. Moreover, a similar growth pattern was observed in UK and France (Bishop & Pagiola, 2012).
The aim and the objective of the research work are as follows:
The market of the farmers will be studied, as it will help to gain knowledge on the opportunities and the threats that are present in the local market. The study will help to analyze the issues that affect the growth of the market. The identification of the issues will allow understanding the ways in which the local food production, distribution systems and used in coming-up with policies for sustainable food production can be improved. The proper knowledge about the market helps to support the local food production systems.
H0: The farmer’s markets are not affected by the proximity of the market to the urban areas, and size of the population.
H1: The farmer’s markets are affected by the proximity of the market to the urban areas, and size of the population.
Introduction
The literature review will be carried out by studying the various scholarly articles and journals that helps to understand the topic in details. Previous research work will help the researcher to evaluate the gaps in the previous literature and further evaluate the impact of the size of population and the proximity of the market to urban areas on farmer’s market.
The consumers are able to get fresh-farm products from the farmer’s markets as they get them directly from the farmers. Moreover, the customers are able to obtain rare farm products from the market. Nevertheless, the market attract a lot of people in one place and create business center in the areas that were once deserted (Sexton, 2013). This gives scopes for the establishment of other service provision businesses, such as banks. The farmer’s market in Australia is beneficial in providing a lot of opportunities. Apart from the offering of fresh farm products, the markets provide community cohesion, provide economic benefits to farmers and employees, and shortening the supply chain. The benefits help to remodel the current food system (Counihan & Van Esterik, 2012).
On the other hand, Lefort, (2012) mentioned that the farmers are able to sell the products directly to the consumers and thus obtain direct feedback from the customers. The sellers are thus able to improve the quality of the products as per the feedbacks of the consumers. The farmer’s market is further safe and beneficial to the environment. There is no need to transport the products over long distances which saves the fuel and reduces the environmental pollution (Byker et al., 2012).
The farmer’s market creates a number of benefits in form of social benefits, environmental benefits and further supports the local government by supporting them. Most of the farmer’s market is conducted on Saturday. The markets operate over a duration of four to five hours in local show grounds, a park or town square area (Alkon, 2012). Apart from the offering of the farm products, the additional facilities provided by the market to the customers are scope for children’s entertainment, visiting chefs cooking food available to the market, good shade from trees, a village hall available during wet weather, tourist information, farm activities such as milking and shearing, local schools providing BBQ breakfast and arrangement for water taps, umbrellas, table cloths, tables and chairs (Piccinini & Loseby, 2016).
The farmer’s market is located in a wide range of locations such as inner city suburbs of the capital cities, regional centers and in small rural towns. A farmer’s market situated in one of these rural areas may beat the trouble of getting new deliver (Freedman et al., 2013). They could have a comparative part to group keeping money administrations which increment access to monetary administrations in these same rural areas. They may likewise be the wellspring of important off-ranch wage for little homesteads (Meyers, 2016).
The literature review section of the research work will help to understand the importance of the farmer’s market in Australia. The section allows the researcher to evaluate the reasons why the consumers prefer the farmer’s market to purchase the farm products.
Introduction
The methodology section of the study studies the various tools and techniques that will help to study achieve the best possible outcome for the study. The various methods such as the research philosophy, approach, data collection process, sampling method and the sample size will be discussed.
There are three types of research philosophy namely the positivism research philosophy, interpretivism and realism research philosophy. In this particular research work, the researcher will use the positivism research philosophy. The positivism research philosophy will adhere to the study of the view and the factual knowledge obtained observation (Meyers, 2016). The positivism philosophy will help the researcher to carry out an independent study.
The research approach includes inductive and deductive research approach. The researcher will use the deductive approach in this particular research. The deductive approach will help the researcher to achieve reasoning for the research work. Therefore, the approach will allow to conduct the research in a detailed and more elaborative manner.
In order to obtain the results for the research and address the research aim and aims and objectives, the researcher will use the primary data collection and the secondary data collection method. In the primary data collection, method includes the quantitative research analysis. The researcher will use the customer-interceptive surveys to collect the data. In this method, the sampling of individual from the population will be performed. The researcher will prepare the questionnaire as one of the survey data collection techniques. A set of 3 open ended questions will be prepared by the researcher to survey the respondents. The questionnaire will help the researcher to gather information from the customers as per their perception. The researcher will survey the customers who purchases products from the farmer’s market. The researcher prepares open ended.
The researcher will use the random probability sampling method to collect the data from the respondents. The researcher will use the random probability sampling method in order to give the individuals equal chances for being selected in the research survey. The questionnaire will be distributed in the urbanized and the rural areas through online research survey (Pitts et al., 2013). The researcher will use the sampling method, as it will help to understand the reasons why the consumers purchase agricultural products directly from the farmers.
The researcher will consider a sample size where 50 respondents will be surveyed in order to achieve the expected outcome. The researcher will consider this sample size as it will help to understand the diverse views of the respondents regarding the research topic.
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Activities |
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Week 14 |
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Choosing the topic |
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Getting approval |
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Arranging the methods of the research |
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Secondary data collection |
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Literature review |
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Primary data collection |
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Analyzing the data |
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Interpreting the data |
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Arranging the findings |
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Preparing final report |
Table 1: Gantt chart
(Source: As created by author)
As the researcher will conduct the primary research, there are certain ethical consideration that needs to be followed. The personal information of the respondents will have to be kept confidential. Furthermore, the survey questionnaire will have to be prepared in such a way that the emotions of the respondents are not hurt. In order to conduct the literature review, the researcher will conduct the secondary data analysis and thus, it will be important for the researcher to gather information from the scholarly articles and internet in an authentic manner.
There will be a number of limitation that might hamper the quality of the research work. There will a probability that few of the respondents might be unwilling to carry out the research survey and thus might result in misleading information. Moreover, the lack of time and finances causes the quality of the research work to degrade to certain extent.
The research methodology section will discuss the various tools and techniques that will help in the process of obtaining the results of the research work. The research methodologies will help to carry out the research in a systemic manner to achieve the best possible outcome.
In order to analyze the data obtained from the respondents through the research survey, the researcher will use the pie charts and other statistical tools. The proportion of different reasons given by the respondents on why they prefer the farmer’s markets will be studied with the pie chart. A comparison will be made between the people in urban centers (urban population) that prefer farmers markets and the people that prefer them in the rural areas.
To analyze the data, the researcher will use the mean and the standard deviation of the respondents who prefer farmers markets from the two areas (urban and rural areas). The Z-test will considered to test the hypothesis. If the value of z is more than the critical value then the null hypothesis will be rejected (Press & Cahill, 2013).
It is expected that the majority of the farmer’s market will be observed in the urban areas and a lesser number of markets in the rural areas. The lesser number of markets in the rural areas will be due to the small population in the rural areas. Thus there will not be enough consumers in the market to support the system. The respondents will tend to choose the farmer’s market as the products in the market are fresher and cheaper compared to other retailers. The products in the market are sold directly to the customers from the producers and are thus stored for lesser time.
References
Alkon, A. H. (2012). Black, white, and green: Farmers markets, race, and the green economy (Vol. 13). University of Georgia Press.
Bishop, J., & Pagiola, S. (Eds.). (2012). Selling forest environmental services: market-based mechanisms for conservation and development. Taylor & Francis.
Byker, C., Shanks, J., Misyak, S., & Serrano, E. (2012). Characterizing farmers’ market shoppers: a literature review. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 7(1), 38-52.
Counihan, C., & Van Esterik, P. (2012). Food and culture: A reader. Routledge.
Freedman, D. A., Choi, S. K., Hurley, T., Anadu, E., & Hébert, J. R. (2013). A farmers’ market at a federally qualified health center improves fruit and vegetable intake among low-income diabetics. Preventive medicine, 56(5), 288-292.
Hicks, K., & Lambert-Pennington, K. (2016). Evaluating the South Memphis Farmers Market as a strategy to improve access to healthy foods: Lessons from 2011. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 4(2), 45-59.
Lefort, R. (2012). Free market economy,‘developmental state’and party-state hegemony in Ethiopia: the case of the ‘model farmers’. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 50(04), 681-706.
Meyers, G. P. (2016). Decolonizing a Food System: Freedom Farmers’ Market as a Place for Resistance and Analysis. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 5(4), 149-152.
Piccinini, A., & Loseby, M. (2016). Agricultural Policies in Europe and the USA: Farmers between Subsidies and the Market. Springer.
Pitts, S. B. J., Wu, Q., McGuirt, J. T., Crawford, T. W., Keyserling, T. C., & Ammerman, A. S. (2013). Associations between access to farmers’ markets and supermarkets, shopping patterns, fruit and vegetable consumption and health indicators among women of reproductive age in eastern North Carolina, USA. Public health nutrition, 16(11), 1944-1952.
Press, C. U., & Cahill, N. S. (2013). Skills for Effective Writing Level 2 Student’s Book. Cambridge University Press.
Sexton, R. J. (2013). Market power, misconceptions, and modern agricultural markets. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 95(2), 209-219.
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