Farmers' markets are important but inadequately studied contributors to local economies. They allow individual entrepreneurs and their families to contribute to the economic life of local communities by providing goods and services that are not readily available through formal, mass markets, and they bring producers and consumers together to solidify bonds of local identity and solidarity. Using data collected from 115 farmers' market vendors in three regions of New York in 1993, we examined the characteristics and operations of three categories of vendors: full-time growers, part-time growers, and non-grower artisans and craftspeople. Drawing on theories of mass production and mass markets, we show how farmers'markets represent intermediate social structures that bridge the formal and informal sectors of the economy.

Retail farmers' markets are seen as key institutions in a more “civic agriculture,” but little is known about how they promote small business entrepreneurship. Drawing on research in economic sociology and economic geography, this paper examines the role of social learning in vendor innovation. Data from a 1999 mail survey of farmers' market vendors in California, New York and Iowa show that business innovation, as represented by intensity of vendors' innovative marketing practices and vendors' successful enterprise expansion, was modest. Social learning through engagement with customers contributed to more innovative marketing by vendors, while social learning through engagement with customers and fellow vendors increased the likelihood of vendors diversifying to additional markets beyond the farmers' market. Certain individual and enterprise characteristics also influenced vendor innovation. This suggests that, although important, the beneficial effects of social learning for vendors at farmers' markets remain moderated by human capital and structural factors.

In many respects the long standing and vigorous debates over alternative agriculture and organic farming are becoming less strident and less polarized. However, despite the mounting evidence that key elements of both the conventional and alternative agricultural communities are beginning to "build bridges" to each other, and to establish formal institutional programs and arrangements for improved communication and program development, important differences continue to separate the proponents and opponents of alternative agriculture. In part, these lingering differences result from the lack of adequate and reliable data, misinformation, and faulty data analyses. In order to clarify those issues which continue to divide the critics and advocates of alternative agriculture, this reappraisal of the debate begins with a methodological critique of comparison studies of conventional and organic farms. Also included is an assessment of fertilizer and pesticide use in American agriculture, the environmental impacts of conventional and reduced-input systems, the relationship between alternative agriculture and efforts to save the family farmer, and the prospects for increased public sector research on reduced-input farming systems.

In the United States, peer review is central to the process by which many government agencies select research proposals for funding. Although several different agency versions of peer review are practiced,2 they share one characteristic: Scientists judge both the potential value of proposed research projects and the ability of proposers to perform the studies. The premise is self-fulfilling. If scientists identified as peer specialists are best qualified to judge the scientific merit of proposals, then peer review becomes a tool of science policy; it both affects how policy is implemented and how decisions on public funding of research are justified.Many scientists strongly support peer review, at least in the abstract.3 Critics of peer review, however, often suggest that the abstract conception does not hold in practice. There are difficulties, they argue, in defining who are &dquo;peers&dquo; and therefore who is capable of evaluating a proposed study.4Reviewers may be unable to remain disinterested when research funds are scarce and they are comimport of particular research problems or on the validity of particular techniques.6 Finally, peer review may even be inappropriate when the criterion for judging proposed research is &dquo;utility&dquo;rather than the advancement of &dquo;pure&dquo; scientific knowledge.' In all, the critics argue, claims that decisions on funding are based purely on merit should be viewed skeptically; a researcher's &dquo;track record&dquo; or past performance, for example, is a mandated component of National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) peer review. Analysts have also observed how peer decisions could have implicit-if not explicit-political biases.8 These criticisms do not demolish arguments for the practical utility of peer review, but 'they do suggest the necessity for examining its workings and unintended sideeffects.Despite the apparent importance of peer review in influencing funding decisions, and despite growing criticism of alleged deficiencies and biases in peer review systems, not very many empirical studies have been done.9 Most examinations have been limited to addressing a few key questions, either because the study has been contracted for by the funding agency whose system is being studied, or because the study has been conducted &dquo;in-house&dquo; (for example, the &dquo;Kirschstein Report, &dquo;1° which details reforms of NIH peer review).Although there has been no suggestion that these investigators had deliberate biases, various factors extending to data collection, analysis, and interpretation have engendered challenges to the effectiveness of peer review. 11 Moreover, there has

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