Farmers Market Rules and Policies: Content and Design Suggestions (From a Lawyer)

Farmers market rules and policies can set out what products can be sold, how vendors are selected, what’s expected of vendors from growing practices to signage to paperwork, and how vendors are disciplined or removed from the market. Rules and policies can do even more, adding to their length and complexity. The landscape gets even more complex when the rules are accompanied by separate vendor applications, hold-harmless agreements, membership materials, and the market has a website providing additional information. All this can put a quite a reading burden on vendors and quite a management burden on the market.

This article is about ways to both maximize the value to a market of its rules and minimize the load on the user.