ANNAPOLIS, MD (Jan. 11, 2011) \u2013 The Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) will host the annual Maryland Farmers\u2019 Market Conference on February 16 and 17 to gather farmers\u2019 market stakeholders and provide information on state regulations.\u00a0 Sessions will include: food safety, social marketing regulations, and promotional opportunities for the 2011 market season.\u00a0 The two-day event will be held at the new Baltimore County Agricultural Resource Center in Cockeysville.\u00a0 Conference participants can participate in one or both days.<\/p>\n
The first day (Feb. 16) is targeted to market managers and will focus on Maryland health and food regulations, using social marketing, accepting SNAP at market, insurance options, and a presentation of the Sticky Economic Evaluation Device (SEED) market evaluation tool by an expert from New Orleans. Learn how to use this free tool to measure and report on your market\u2019s economic impact in your community.<\/p>\n
Feb. 17 sessions are aimed at market farmers and will focus on training for Maryland Farmers\u2019 Market Nutrition Program, Fruit and Vegetable checks, and good agricultural practices (GAPs), plus sessions on Maryland health and food regulations, mediation services, and crop insurance opportunities.<\/p>\n
Farmers\u2019 markets have multiplied due to the increase in demand for fresh, local food and will continue to expand.\u00a0 Anyone involved with or interested in the operations of farmers\u2019 markets should plan to attend the 2011 Farmers\u2019 Market Conference.<\/p>\n
MDA\u2019s Marketing Division supports farmers\u2019 market development, fosters links between farmers and consumers through the Maryland\u2019s Best branding program, and administers the Farmers\u2019 Market Nutrition Programs which provide checks to buy fresh produce for nutritionally at-risk women, infants, children and income-eligible senior citizens while increasing sales for farmers.<\/p>\n
The deadline to register for the conference is February 12. Contact Amy Crone at 410-841-5770 for more information or\u00a0register online<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ANNAPOLIS, MD (Jan. 11, 2011) \u2013 The Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) will host the annual Maryland Farmers\u2019 Market Conference on February 16 and 17 to gather farmers\u2019 market stakeholders and provide information on state regulations.\u00a0 Sessions will include: food safety, social marketing regulations, and promotional opportunities for the 2011 market season.\u00a0 The two-day event Read the Rest…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[130,915],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-conference","tag-farmers-market"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/mda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}