Developing Consumer Driven Markets for Southern Wisconsin Farmers

Developing Consumer Driven Markets for Southern Wisconsin Farmers

Summary

This three-phase project will undertake a systematic scan of promising market opportunities in southern Wisconsin for food products raised locally using environmentally sound practices. From this market research we will, with considerable farmer advice, select a few promising products to develop into collective farmer marketing initiatives in southern Wisconsin. As we organize interested farmers around these “market clusters,” we will pay special attention to the many farmers who sell to global commodity markets but for whom they have become a losing proposition. We will work with farmers and farm groups to identify ways that Wisconsin state agencies can assist farmers statewide in market development.

Objectives

1) To identify, analyze, and selectively respond to markets in southern Wisconsin for food products from local, sustainably oriented sources.
2) To share market information gained from meeting Objective 1 with southern Wisconsin farmers and coordinate their response to that information.
3) To explore and organize the development of legislative and state programs and policies supporting alternative marketing initiatives in Wisconsin.
4) To share lessons of this southern Wisconsin project within the state and region.

We will first interview a variety of farmers to set practical parameters for our market investigation under Objective 1. We will conduct and distribute results of an in-depth market-related literature review. We will then conduct interviews with buyers for grocery stores, restaurants, and wholesale distributors in southern Wisconsin, to learn how consumer trends manifest themselves in actual purchases and identify potential opportunities for southern Wisconsin farmers using environmentally sound practices. We will also interview successful innovators and marketers to learn from their experiences. Farmers and buyers will then come to a “stakeholder meeting” to help us identify opportunities that appear both promising in the marketplace and practicable for a variety of farmers in southern Wisconsin. After completing a feasibility scan to assess basic financial, logistical, and production requirements for several of the opportunities identified in the Stakeholder meeting, the project partners and our farmer advisory council will choose 2-4 market opportunities to be developed by this project.

We will begin our work toward Objective 2 by communicating widely the results of our market research, noting products that stakeholders have identified as having significant market growth potential. We will organize farmers who respond to our solicitations into 2-4 “market clusters”, helping them identify goals, leadership, basic work plans, professional and financial resources, etc. without, under this grant, actually implementing market plans.

We will begin our policy-related work toward Objective 3 with a scan of literature on other states’ policy initiatives related to alternative marketing. We will then engage farmers, farm group representatives, and others in discussions about gaps in state support for alternative marketing and their ideas for potential policy remedies. We will distill those ideas, identifying advocates to advance the policies around which consensus is greatest. This project will not conduct advocacy.

We place a priority on sharing information and experiences. In addition to communicating with southern Wisconsin farmers through media, farm groups, and a direct letter, we will communicate to farmers and interested parties outside our target range through farm and general media, newsletters, and farm groups, grassroots and electronic networks. We will work with the state’s PDP planning team to assist in relevant training and outreach.

This project will produce reliable and valuable information to farmers in southern Wisconsin about market opportunities. In addition to making that information available to all farmers, we will assist farmers participating in this project’s 2-4 market clusters in pursuing market development. We believe that this project can make a lasting difference through its constructive coordination of farm groups and others to identify and develop policy proposals for substantial state institutional support for marketing innovation.

Our commitment to working to develop 2-4 market clusters based on farmer-driven, market research in southern Wisconsin clearly addresses SARE’s priority area of “Small and moderate-sized marketing systems.” By identifying gaps in Wisconsin’s state agency support for alternative marketing, and developing state policy initiatives that respond to those gaps “Impact of farm policy at the local, state, or federal level on sustainable agriculture implementation in the NCR” is addressed.

Collaborators: