Food sovereignty and self-sufficiency are urgent issues for Puerto Rico. Today, 85% of Puerto Rico’s food supply is imported, fueling an extreme dependence on the shipping industry (Cordero, n.d.). For a region vulnerable to extreme weather events that often disrupt shipping schedules, that dependence manifests as a serious threat to the survival and well-being of many Puerto Rican residents. Small farmers, who represent 85% of Puerto Rico’s agricultural industry, become responsible for feeding the archipelago when shipping to Puerto Rico is disrupted (Kenner et al., 2023). However, small farmers in Puerto Rico face numerous challenges with minimal support. Natural disasters, damaged infrastructure, lack of government protection, and the exodus of farm workers from the region all exacerbate these farmers’ vulnerability (Kenner et al., 2023). A crucial step in tackling these challenges is connecting farmers to venues where they can distribute and sell their produce around the island, like farmers markets. These markets help farmers to grow and develop their businesses, ensuring their survival. Those connections also raise awareness for small farmers in the broader community and can encourage residents to incorporate more local products in their regular shopping. Despite their potential and importance, farmers markets in Puerto Rico face many challenges. Organizers often struggle with inconsistent vendor participation, unreliable customer attendance, and limited resources to effectively manage operations or conduct outreach (US Department of Agriculture 2023).

Sponsor and Project Description

Founded after Hurricane Fiona in 2022, the Apoyo Mutuo Agrícola (AMA) aims to support small farmers and local agriculture by creating a network of community support. Through community education and activism, they raise awareness for the challenges faced by these farmers and organize initiatives to work toward a more equitable agricultural future for Puerto Rico. One way AMA directly supports farmers in their network is through their El Agromercado (Farmers Market), held every month in San Juan to give local producers a venue to sell their goods and learn about AMA’s other services. Like many farmers markets in Puerto Rico, El Agromercado struggles to manage their operations and attract customers, especially after a location change early in 2025. This project provided actionable recommendations to AMA on how the farmer’s market experience can be improved for customers, vendors, and organizers. Improving the market’s interactions with suppliers and consumers is one of the main concerns. While sellers may find it difficult to communicate with organizers and receive support, customers may feel disconnected or unaware of the market’s goods. Furthermore, the market has minimal community awareness, which makes it difficult to attract new vendors and customers. Our resulting main objectives were to 1) provide recommendations and training for relationship management systems, 2) identify and address areas of improvement for customer experience at the market, and 3) expand and enhance AMA’s marketing ability.

Methods

To support our three objectives, we conducted preliminary online research on relationship management systems and communication, farmers market ‘best practices’, and social media marketing strategies. Equipped with this background knowledge, we conducted interviews with four groups: El Agromercado organizers, other local farmers market organizers, market customers, and market vendors. In our conversations with El Agromercado’s organizers, vendors, and customers, we gathered perspectives on the market’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential solutions, as related to our objectives. When interviewing participants and organizers of other markets in San Juan, we aimed to learn what strategies have been successful in their communities. Additionally, we conducted observations at two other farmers markets in San Juan, where we learned about vendor placement and effective signage, and made connections with stakeholders of other markets. After conducting initial interviews and observations, we developed and piloted solutions at El Agromercado, which occurred halfway through the IQP term. Throughout the second half, we conducted a second round of interviews and surveys to evaluate the performance of our solutions and finalize our recommendations. To support our marketing recommendations, we also completed a social media analysis of two local markets and El Agromercado’s Instagram pages.

Findings and Recommendations

AMA’s market is still in its early stages, with aspirations to grow. For our three objectives, we examined the challenges faced by AMA and the market organizers, our pilot solutions based on contextual research, and post-implementation assessments. These informed our final recommendations to AMA to improve the farmers market experience for customers, vendors, and organizers.

Enhancing AMA’s Communication Systems

From our conversations with AMA organizers, we were able to set constraints for the systems we investigated. The quickest-emerging priority was a system that was low-to-no-cost. We learned that our communications systems would need to integrate with Whatsapp, the preferred messaging platform in Puerto Rico. They would also need to be easy to learn and use, so that integration would be smooth and the systems could be adapted by organizers long after our project concluded. Pre-existing CRM and MRM software was not appropriate for AMA to adopt due to high subscription fees, limited free features, or steep learning curves. We streamlined El Agromercado’s communication processes using free, familiar software, through a combination of Whatsapp Communities messaging and the Google Suite. We ultimately interacted with four systems: the preordering, Members Relationship Management (MRM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and the Whatsapp Community. The MRM we developed was a Google Form that collected information from vendors ahead of time to support each month’s market. It asked questions about their products, pricing, equipment needs, and volunteer availability, and compiled responses in one Google Sheet for easy viewing by market organizers. We received very positive feedback about this system at the end of the term; only minor adjustments to question descriptions and the timing for sending the form were needed. The CRM was a second Google Form that collected demographic and contact information from customers. It was accessed through a QR code displayed at the market, and an incentive was provided to encourage customers to join the CRM. This strategy proved very successful on the day of the market; we received over seventy entries in just one day. After customers enter the CRM, they can be added to the Whatsapp community. The Whatsapp community has three separate groups: a vendors-only group; a customers-only group; and a general group, which includes organizers, vendors, and customers. In the vendors-only group, farmers and vendors are given links to the MRM as well as any other important information or updates regarding the upcoming market. In the customers-only group, AMA can send out links to the food box registration for pre-orders as well as other information and updates. Lastly, there is an announcements group within the community that includes both groups. This is for messages and updates that regard the entire community (both vendors and customers). By creating the Whatsapp community groups, AMA ensures that communication remains relevant and manageable for both vendors and customers, improving overall engagement and organization. While this Whatsapp Communities and Google Form approach presents some strong advantages for AMA’s operations, the strategy is not without its shortcomings. Whatsapp, in particular, can be strict in enforcing its anti-spam Terms of Service clauses, often triggered by mass messaging or large group creations. Google Forms, too, has its own limitations. One is the high level of organization required to manage a new Form each month. Another is that while Google Forms can collect information, its analysis capabilities are not advanced enough to easily provide the kinds of insights that AMA organizers may find useful, including automatic item totals or product analytics.

Market Operations and Customer Experience

Our research into successful farmers markets and the interview process revealed a long list of best practices and details that made other markets more inviting and enjoyable to customers. We focused our solutions and recommendations on four main topics: visibility, layout, economic accessibility, and branding. A key opportunity for improvement was signage. In our interviews with another local market organizer, we learned how important signage had been for her market’s growth in its early years. To improve the signage directing customers to El Agromercado, we built and displayed three signs in high visibility locations (see Fig A). Additionally, that organizer explained that vendor table signage had improved sales at her market, especially signage that communicated available products and their prices. Although we did not incorporate this at the market we attended, it could be an easy change for AMA to make in the future. In our research, layout emerged as an important market characteristic. The organizer we interviewed also described her strategies for vendor placement, which involved spacing out popular vendors to coax customers into walking past more tables. We had too few vendors to work with at our market to incorporate this suggestion, but it could be a valuable strategy for AMA to keep in mind as El Agromercado grows. Our conversations with AMA’s organizers revealed a disconnect between El Agromercado’s offerings and the needs of the Rio Piedras community. The neighborhood is home to a large low-income and elderly population, many of whom rely on food stamps to purchase their groceries (ZCTA5 00925 – Census Bureau Profile). Currently, El Agromercado cannot accept EBT as a form of payment, which makes it harder for those community members to benefit from the market’s offerings and make purchases from AMA’s vendors. To expand access, organizers expressed an interest in investigating the process of an EBT application for El Agromercado. We contacted the Department of Family and obtained the forms required for EBT certification; however, we learned that being approved is a tedious and lengthy process. While it will pose a challenge, we recommend that AMA continue to pursue EBT certification to become more accessible to Rio Piedras community members. El Agromercado would benefit from strategies that communicate that AMA runs the market and provide information about the organization. An information table about AMA would give customers the opportunity to learn more about where their products are from and how they can support the farmers that participate. This table should include pictures of AMA members engaged in community, and agricultural based activities as well as descriptions as to what AMA does as an organization. This can help customers put a face to the farmers market and get a sense of the community driven objectives that AMA’s market displays.

Figure A. This shows the installation of the sign at the end of Jose y Diego Street and a directional arrow pointing to El Agromercado.

Increasing Community Awareness

Despite AMA’s efforts to attract a wider audience online, our examination of their Instagram page revealed limited and inconsistent social media presence, which limited AMA’s ability to reach customers via social media.To increase community engagement and visibility, we identified key strategies, developed a social media marketing guide, and created an initial content library. In our examinations of the Mercado Viejo San Juan (MVSJ) and Cooperativa Madre Tierra (COMT) Instagram pages, we found that post consistency, attention-grabbing content themes, and varied post types were strategies shared by both accounts. They incorporated themes important to farmers market customers in their content and hashtags, such as shopping local, community connections, fresh and high quality food, and education. They also diversified the kinds of content they post, including content that gives customers essential information about the market, highlights vendors and products, or promotes special events. We also learned about some general social media strategies, such as tagging, joint posts, and story strategies. We summarized these strategies, and those inferred from the social media observation, in one document: the Social Media Playbook. This document is meant to be a set of guidelines for AMA’s organizers to revamp and revitalize their social media pages. It gives examples and ideas for content, describes strategies, and explains themes relevant to AMA’s marketing goals. The Playbook was reviewed by AMA’s social media organizer and revised to be as helpful to her as possible. To support AMA’s transition to a more robust social media strategy, we created a bank of initial social media content for organizers to draw from, including four posts and videos. In addition, we collected over 100 pictures and videos to be used for future content for the Agromercado Instagram. Our main approach focused on visually engaging content that would showcase the market’s atmosphere, vendors, and fresh produce in a way that is attractive to the Instagram audience. The goal was to develop content that represented the themes captured in the other two pages, while also creating content with different intentions that balance the four we developed.