Progress report for ONC24-156
Project Information
In Harmony Farm and seven farm partners (FP), each with one-to-five-acre parcels, will implement the project. The effort is focused on a combination of farmer education/skill building to support marketing, raising awareness of the value of locally sourced, sustainably produced food (LSF) with institutional consumers, and creating a digital point of sale to connect farmers and institutional consumers.
Efforts address multiple community needs, including:
- Limited access to urban plots of land, minimal opportunities to scale, and inaccessible business support often prevent refugee farmers from expanding their businesses. IHF provides larger parcels, business support to formalize operations, and instruction in regenerative agriculture.
- Market development for larger purchases is necessary to support scaled production. Aside from farm-to-table restaurants, there are limited institutional markets for LSF resulting in most refugee farmers making direct-to-consumer sales – a strategy that can’t stand alone as they scale. This project will raise awareness of the value of sustainable production, creating institutional demand to balance farmers’ direct-to-consumer efforts.
- Connecting institutional buyers to larger-scale sources of LSF using an adapted, digital point of sale that allows institutions to identify needs and farmers to make evidence-based planning decisions to meet those demands.
IHF will partner with seven small, beginning farm businesses operated by historically underserved producers to teach farmers how to:
- Implement sustainable agricultural practices.
- Market their harvest through cooperative, online presales.
- Use presales as an effective strategy to support efficient crop planting resulting in environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable production.
IHF will complete outreach to at least 100 institutional consumers to:
- Demonstrate the value of sustainable agricultural production.
- Connect institutional consumers to points of purchase for LSF.
- Increase consumer access to and purchase of LSF for institutions and the people they serve.
Cooperators
Research
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
IHF staff implemented GAP certification and conducted field and food safety training for the farmer partners, as well as conducting training in
procedures to sell to retailers in the area. IHF staff worked with farmers to teach about collaborative sales and farmer partners executed a test run in planting a collaborative plot of radishes and made a sale to an institutional buyer. The crop did not do particularly well due to poor seasonal conditions, but it was an opportunity for farmers to get their feet wet and experience selling to an institutional market.
During the 2024 growing season, IHF staff held classes with farm partners on land care and maintenance, planting plans, cooperative sales, education in food safety, washing and storage, and planting cover crops. IHF also contracted with a retired agronomist who conducted a class with the farmers on pest and disease management, as well as doing one-on-one consulting with farmers in their fields. IHF is looking to hire an agronomist this coming growing season to further assist farmers with addressing pest/disease management within regenerative farming.
We have plans in place for this coming season to launch the online sales platform and assist farmers with planting plans based on pre-sales and a CSA model. We also are providing assistance to farmers to help them identify and sell to retail markets. Our plan is to connect individual farms with a specific retail market with which they can build a relationship and learn the process of selling to retail and institutional markets.
Learning Outcomes
Food safety
Record keeping
Institutional sales
Project Outcomes
Our project impacts beginning and underserved farmers by giving them access to land and infrastructure and providing new channels for different markets on various platforms. We are helping them to sustain their current farmer's market platform, but also have introduced them to new markets with wholesale and institutional partners (such as Food Bank of Iowa, and our current talks with local grocery stores and restaurants). The addition of institutional sales to Food Bank of Iowa has increased their sales and decreased waste of unsold produce. Opening up these new markets is multi-reaching in effect, helping farmers make informed decisions surrounding their planting plans, marketing plans, harvest schedule, and labor needs, and contributes towards reducing waste and getting more locally produced, nutritious food to Iowans.
We are also in the process of developing new partnerships that will increase land access for future farmers, as well as expanding our partnership and resource base to provide more education on plant/soil health and regenerative farming.
We sit down with farmers on a regular basis to assist one-on-one with planting plans, inputs, record keeping, marketing, and business growth.
The GAP certification/food safety education that we have conducted with the farmers is an added-value element that is attractive to institutional partners and adds credibility to our farm partners.
We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish so far, but we also have encountered some challenges this past year that have made it difficult to execute on some areas of the project. We were combining this project with another federal grant we received that had similar goals. We lost the federal funding, and we have also had to navigate staff turnover multiple times this year. As a result, we have been working to re-evaluate our budget and shift how we execute our project. We maintain the same priorities, but we are evaluating the best way to accomplish these goals.
Due to the staff turnover, we have been focused on hiring and training the staff necessary for the operation of our organization and have not hired a third-party outreach director. The work we have done so far has all been accomplished through internal IHF staff. We also lost a federal grant and funding that affected our plan and operations. We are reviewing the SARE grant and figuring out if we can fund this position with only SARE dollars since we lost our other funding. We have a part-time contracted staff member who runs our social media and public outreach. We are looking into whether this individual might be able to take on the role of outreach director as well.
We spent some time researching an online platform for pre-sales. We were looking into Farmigo as an option. One of the difficulties we encounter, however, is that our current group of farmers do not have any prior computer or technology education. We were able to work with DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College) last year to hold a computer course where the farmers were taught basic computer skills. But even with that, we believe that adding more technology education to the farmers’ load at this juncture would hinder their business more than it would grow it. With all these considerations, we have opted to develop the online platform in-house within our own website.
Our current marketing plan for pre-sales for the 2025 season is that each farmer will have a new local market that they did not have last year. We currently have established pre-sales (word of mouth) with two different food banks, a grocery store, a restaurant, one chef, and two farmers participating in an in-house CSA (we’re soft launching it in-house this year for learning purposes, and they will go public next year). We also have two additional restaurants we are talking with about establishing pre-sales. We’ve developed this plan as a solid way of helping our farmers establish new pre-sale markets. Some of those pre-sales may be happening through the online platform, but others (like the CSA) will be offline. Our goal is that we can develop and use the online platform where it makes sense, but the overall goal of establishing pre-sales is the primary objective, and that’s why we developed the above detailed plan.
We currently receive baseline data from our farmers consisting of input data, planting plans, harvest and sales data. This is gathered throughout the year. We do not have the capabilities to gather carbon sequestration data anymore after the loss of the federal grant funding.