Farmers' markets are up and running now around the country, even in northern climates like Spokane. I was having some fun with Google Insights to see what kind of trends around the country are revealed by people typing "farmers market" into Google.

This first graph shows the rapid rise of interest in farmers markets over the last 6 years.

 

This next map shows how different metropolitan areas compare in their interest in the search term, "farmers market." Portland has the highest interest and is set as 100% and all the other regions are compared to that on a percentage basis. Spokane is middle of the pack 30% compared with farmers market crazy Portland. Go here for the interactive version of the map.

Below is the breakdown of metropolitan areas. I'm surprised to see Madison, Wisconsin so high on the list. The data is "normalized" meaning that the percentages represent comparative interest vs. absolute search volume which would always favor the largest cities.

 
This is a beta version so this window into the farmers' market landscape is limited. I noticed that if I type in "farmers markets", using the plural, there is a whole different set of data and rankings with Seattle-Tacoma coming out on top.

 

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