USDA Facilitates Local Food Systems

USDA Facilitates Local Food Systems

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report.?
Many consumers are interested in supporting local agriculture and purchasing local food. So finding and connecting farmers to organizations that distribute and market local food to consumers and commercial markets is very important.

Food Hubs are businesses or organizations that connect producers with buyers by offering a suite of production, distribution, and marketing services.

These Food Hubs help farmers of all sizes to meet the growing consumer demand for fresh, local food by gaining entry into commercial and larger volume markets such as grocery stores, hospitals and schools.

Last week USDA’s Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced the release of a new regional Food Hub guide, which identifies 170 Food Hubs across the nation, 12 of which are located within the Pacific Northwest.
Deputy Secretary Merrigan shares more.

Merrigan: “It’s a great piece. It provides resource help for people, case studies. It is one in a series of documents that USDA has produced that people can find on the Food Hub website in the Agricultural Marketing Services; but in this very moment of release of something this exciting as this you can just go to our main site USDA.gov and find it.”

Merrigan says these hubs play a critical role in developing stronger supply chains and addressing the infrastructure challenges while supporting food access, regional economic development and job creation.?

I’m KayDee Gilkey with the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.