Emily Mitchell

Seeking fresh food and supporting local producers: perceptions and motivations of farmers’ market customers

ABSTRACT Farmers’ markets revitalise public spaces. They create a place of diversity and interest and provide consumers with an opportunity to purchase fresh, local and seasonal foods in a social and community-focused environment. In this study, we aimed to investigate the backgrounds, attitudes and motivations of 633 customers at 17 farmers’ markets in Sydney. We found that shoppers were motivated by a variety of social, ethical, health and environmental factors. Customers looked to purchase high quality, fresh, nutritious and locally produced foods that had been grown or made using sustainable and environmentally friendly farming and food production methods. Forming direct relationships with producers and fostering community connections were also seen as important benefits of farmers’ markets. A collaborative approach involving market managers, community and government groups, planners, developers, health organisations, producers and consumers is required to identify, trial and fund strategies to promote farmers’ markets as an affordable, beneficial and convenient shopping option for all members of the community.

Socioeconomic differences in the cost, availability and quality of healthy food in Sydney

Objective: To compare the cost of a basket of staple foods, together with the availability and quality of fresh fruit and vegetables, by supermarket store type in high and low socioeconomic suburbs of Sydney.

18.8 % efficient laser-doped semiconductor fingers screen-printed silicon solar cell with light-induced plating

The practical realization of high efficiency laser-doped semiconductor fingers (SCF) silicon solar cell is inhibited by high contact resistance. By plating the SCF with metal, a new SCF cell concept known as the “Advanced SCF” (AdvSCF) cell that can resolve the contact resistance problem is presented. In the first AdvSCF cells demonstrated in this work, the nickel (Ni) plating coverage across the cell was found to be non-uniform with Ni voids mostly concentrated around the busbar. This was found to be avoidable by ensuring that the spin-on phosphoric acid dopant layer was uniformly thick across the whole cell area and especially at the busbar. With uniform Ni plating coverage achieved, in a batch of 6 AdvSCF cells, an average batch efficiency of 18.40 % was achieved with the highest at 18.82 %. This was achieved without any experimental optimization of the front grid design or other cell properties, implying that there is potential to achieve significantly higher efficiency levels.