Capital Region Farmers' Market: Navigating the Local

The rise of interest in local food has led to the proliferation of a range of food distribution alternatives including farmers’ markets within which ‘local’ is often embedded in market governance and practice. A review of the literature demonstrates that local is a highly contested and nuanced concept through which multiple economic, social, environmental, political and psychological criteria intersect (La Trobe, 2001). Farmers’ market managers juggle these many and, at times competing criteria. This paper explores the link between the governance of the Capital Region Farmers’ Market (CRFM) and the way in which the management committee enact the local through operational practices. The CRFM, located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), is the largest farmers’ market in Australia, generating AU $20 million per annum for the local economy as well as a range of direct and indirect benefits for producers, consumers and the ACT community. The results indicate that the CRFM management committee understood the value of local as a point of differentiation from competitors and ensured that local was embedded in market governance and practice. However, the manifold criteria of local also provided the committee with the flexibility to meet competing needs of all three guiding ‘pillars’ of the CRFM: farmers, consumers and community