About 40 mobile market have sprung up around the US in the past few years as a strategy to provide healthy food choices to communities identified as food deserts - communities with low food access. These communities are mostly poor, often minority, and frequently have high levels of nutrition related illnesses, such as obesity, heart disease, and type II diabetes. Mobile markets in the form of buses, trucks, or semi-trailers outfitted with refrigeration, cash registers, credit, and electronic transfers retailing equipemtn are a lower cost alternative to establishing brick-and-mortar stores to provide healthy food access to multiple locations.Studies of wehther and how effective mobile markets are in providing greater access to fresh foods or increasing farm sales are scarce. 

The goal of this study was to investigate whether mobile food markets may be effective inf acilitating healthy food choices to their communities. A copy of the written study is here; a powerpoint presentation is attached.

Another helpful resource is USDA's Food Access Research Atlas, which provides food access data for populations within census tracts. The Farmers Market Search is also a handy tool to identify farmers markets in and around your community.