The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to spend $52 million to support local and regional food systems like farmers’ markets and food hubs, as well as new research on organic farming.
 

The funding will be the first outlay to local and organic enterprises of the farm bill signed into law by President Obama in February, which tripled the amount of money aimed at that sector to $291 million, The New York Times reports.

 

The organic business, which has long complained that the USDA does not support it financially, will get $125 million over the next five years for research and $50 million for conservation programs.
 

Farmers’ markets are proliferating around the country, increasing 76 percent to 8,268 since 2008, according to the Agriculture Department, but they have trouble marketing themselves.
 

“These types of local food systems are the cornerstones of our plans to revitalize the rural economy,” said Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary. “If you can connect local produce with markets that are local, money gets rolled around in the local community more directly compared to commercial agriculture where products get shipped in large quantities somewhere else, helping the economy there.”
 

The USDA will also be putting $30 million a year into marketing programs for farmers markets and promotion of locally grown foods, and has an additional $70 million available as a block grant to support more research on so-called specialty crops, or fruits and vegetables.
 

Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, an organic research and advocacy group, hailed the USDA decision.
 

“It’s a really nice bump for us because we’ve been getting chump change for research,” said Kastel.
 

He added that the organic farming business, with about $35 billion in sales in the United States last year, needs more money to study organic practices.