The purpose of this project is to research and develop new marketing information systems which will help farmers improve their marketing skills and competitiveness. After searching the work that has been done previously and testing them with three groups of farmers, we decided to build a marketing tool which was more responsive to the expressed needs of the producers. MarketScape, the name of our evolving tool, is a GIS grounded, interactive display and analysis tool which producers can use to identify markets for their products.

Farmers express a need for help in identifying consumers where they could direct market their products, to narrow in on their food consumption patterns, and determine the size of potential markets for their products across New York State.

We began development of a preliminary version of a tool which could be used for identifying areas of potential customers and conducted serveral demonstrations of it both on campus and at various places around New York State. Based on comments from those demonstrations we have revised the structure of the tool and expect to have a beta version of MarketScape(TM) in the field during 2006.

We expect to have a beta version of MarketScape(TM) in the field during 2006, and, pending successful fundraising, we expect to have a complete product ready for distribution in 2007. During its build-out phases, however, we will continue to assist a variety of agricultural marketing projects around the state including mapping local consumers interested in integrated pest management (IPM), local meats, organic foods, maple syrup, specialty cheeses, and other products. We fully anticipate that MarketScape(TM) will lead to new sales and profits for New York State farmers in the years to come.

• Gill Gillespie
• Duncan Hilchey
• W. F. Uva
• Jennifer Wilkins