Resident Survey

Let's Have More Locally Grown Food!

Our North Shore communities deserve increased availability of fresh, locally grown food that is accessible and affordable to all residents while providing a fair standard of living to the farmers. As we work to create a roadmap to strengthen our local food system, we need your help! Residents bring a unique and critical perspective to this process.

If you have any interest in access to more locally-grown healthy foods, supporting local food production, growing your own food, or exploring a career in agriculture or food production, this survey is for you:

Take the survey!

Past Survey Results

A huge thank you to those that already took this survey when we first released it in October 2023 - January 2024! We received responses from over 400 residents beyond our five identified planning project towns (Beverly, Salem, Peabody, Danvers, and Lynn), which provided us with important insights about local food preferences, access, and interest in growing food (whether personally or professionally).

While we're working on analyzing the data and compiling resident feedback, here are preliminary insights from some of the key survey questions:

Q1. Would you prefer locally grown foods over foods grown outside of our region? (If cost and availability were the same)

Nearly all respondents indicated some preference for locally grown food.

We plan to explore to clarify how 'locally grown foods" are defined by community members.

Q2. How available are *fresh* foods that are traditional to your family/heritage at your local market?

These results could be indicative of limited diversity in our respondent population. Nevertheless, it remains an important area for further exploration. We plan to explore deeper to determine if ethnically diverse populations indicate similar findings.

Q3. Where do you get your fresh, locally grown food? (Check all that apply)

Grocery stores and farms are the top locations people report accessing fresh local food.

See some earlier insights from this question where we took a closer look at the data

No respondents from Marblehead get their locally grown food from a grocery store.

54% of people get their locally grown food from EITHER a combination of "farm, garden, and grocery store" OR "farm and grocery store"

Q4. If you have difficulty accessing locally grown foods, tell us what easy access would be like for you.

consider things like seasonality, price, transportation not available, distance from your home, time, etc

Price and availability are the top barriers for people accessing local food.

'Price' refers to affordability of the products

'Availability' refers to:

Seasonal access
Limited weekly availability (such as 1x/week farmers markets)
Time of day the products are available (such as not being able to shop after work)

Q5. Can you envision yourself growing food in any of these growing spaces? If you were provided training, funding, space, transportation, etc. (see descriptions of the types of growing spaces)

Nearly 60% of respondents can envision themselves growing their own food in an individual garden.
Only 1% of respondents indicated no interest in any growing space.

Q6. Would you be interested in working for or starting your own business in food growing (ex: on a farm) or food processing (ex: making jams, sauces, baked goods)?

Nearly half of respondents have some interest "(yes/maybe)" in working for or starting their own business in food growing.

As we look to find ways to nurture and expand the pipeline for farming and other food system careers, we see a key opportunity to follow up with these interested residents. Are they aware of existing training programs available? Do they know where to begin? Can we as a coalition help them connect the dots to help get them started?

Q7. If you want to grow or work with local food, what types of support would you want? (check all that apply)

To access this data set:

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