National Farmers Market Week 2010 is August 1-7. How do you plan to celebrate? This year marks the 11th annual National Farmers Market Week. Since the USDA began declaring National Farmers Market Week, the number of farmers markets has grown to 5,274. The excitement is growing! Support your local market!

The Dashboard allows users to see weekly volume and price information presented in graphs and tables that can be customized for viewing and downloaded for use in reports and presentations. The Dashboard offers a friendly format that can be readily understood by producers, packers and other market participants.

The Agricultural Marketing Service awarded a Farmers Market Promotion Program grant to the Colorado Farmers Market Association to build infrastructure for electronic benefit transfer (EBT) payments at farmers markets from participants in the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

This handbook provides essential guidance for farmers market managers installing an Electronic Benefits Transfer machine to accept nutrition benefits, and advice for making the program work successfully for vendors and customers.

Since 1915, producers, processors, manufacturers, shippers, wholesalers and others have relied on USDA Market News for timely, reliable, and unbiased price and market information.

USDA has completed tough new food safety standards for ground beef purchased by AMS for Federal food and nutrition assistance programs including school lunches. These new requirements will be applicable to all AMS ground beef purchases made on or after July 1, 2010.

AMS recently presented an interactive webinar entitled "How to Sell to the USDA." The Webinar was hosted by Red Book Credit Services and was part of its free Red Book University educational offerings as a service to the produce industry