As the old saying goes, “if you can measure it, you can manage it.” And this is true for farmers markets as well. Collecting data helps tell the story and evolution of your market. Sales numbers, customer counts, vendor demographics, product availability, and more, represent important information about your market that you can leverage to improve the market season after season. It can also help secure funding and grants, while showing how important the market is to your community. The key to data collection is to make it work for you and your market’s capacity. This requires an understanding of how to track and report it annually, and incentivizing vendors and/or customers to provide information that can be of use to you. By doing so, you will have a data set that can help you track the growth of your market over time.