2017 ASHS Annual Conference

Farmers’ markets are popular and successful in Northwest Arkansas (NWA), however a significant amount of produce goes unsold at the end of the day at many markets. Many growers do not have alternative markets, despite a strong local foods awareness in NWA. The University of Arkansas, the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market (FFM) and the Fayetteville Public School (FPS) district collaborated to determine the potential for local foods aggregation and distribution in NWA. Project activities included a survey of institutional markets to identify interest and barriers for using local foods, a pilot project between the FFM Co-op and the FPS Farm-to-School (F2S) program with collective bidding and ordering, developing USDA approved recipes featuring local foods, increasing local foods use and awareness among students, parents and staff, equipping school kitchens to handle local produce, and meetings with stakeholders and advisory board members to determine the feasibility of an aggregation distribution system in NWA. As a result of this project it was learned there was significant interest in incorporating locally grown foods into food service programs in NWA institutional facilities including schools, hospitals, nursing homes and child day care centers. Institutional barriers to using local foods included lack of a produce ordering system, not knowing how to connect with growers, and concerns with increased local product price. In the F2S pilot, FFM Co-op won the primary bid for 5 crops and made 14 deliveries to FPS in 2016. Sales were less than expected due to communication barriers, growers learning the ordering and delivery system, and difficulties predicting crop availability. The FPS equipped kitchens to increase the capacity for district wide purchasing by training kitchen staff, purchasing kitchen equipment and developing recipes featuring local produce. They also promoted their local foods menu items and growers through their Harvest of the Month program and social media. The Advisory board met bi-annually to provide input and to establish a roadmap for next steps in advancing the NWA local food system. Overall, the activities in this project revealed barriers to be addressed to scale up the NWA local food system as well as opportunities including identifying grower training needs, opportunities for new enterprises such as an aggregation and distribution system and interest of institutional markets. Next steps will be to remediate deficiencies and facilitate opportunities to further advance the NWA local food system with community networks and partnerships.