A Coordinated Farm to Institution Supply Chain Approach to Increase Market Access and Community Food Security

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Commodities

• Fruits: berries (blueberries), berries (other), berries (strawberries), grapes, melons
• Vegetables: cucurbits, greens (leafy), onions, peppers, radishes (culinary), sweet corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, squash, cabbage, green beans

Practices

• Crop Production: cover crops, food product quality/safety
• Education and Training: farmer to farmer, networking, workshop
• Farm Business Management: farm-to-institution, market study, value added
• Sustainable Communities: food access and security, food loss and waste recovery/reduction, local and regional food systems, partnerships

Regionalization has been identified as one strategy to promote food system resilience. However, many of the markets that are the hallmark of local food systems, such as farmers markets, have historically excluded consumers who are lower-income and of color. Farm to Institution programs, such as Farm to Early Care and Education (ECE), School, University, and Senior Services, are one strategy to address this equity issue. These community institutions are a primary source of meals for children, youth, and older adults, especially in rural areas, and often rely on federal food assistance programs to subsidize feeding programs. Integrating local food into meals and snacks at these institutions has the potential to improve consumer access to healthy food, while also opening up new markets for small scale, limited resource farmers. 

Research has shown that selling into wholesale markets, such as institutions, increases the economic viability of small to mid-size regional farmers more than selling into direct markets alone. Despite these benefits, many historically marginalized and underrepresented farmers of color lack the infrastructure, resources, and experience needed to access these markets, due to historical discrimination in resource allocation. Most small to mid-sized farms also do not have the same logistical and scale-related efficiencies observed in the mainstream food system, resulting in higher marginal costs. This has led to the question of how local food systems can be “scaled-up” so that the lower prices in wholesale markets can be offset by bulk volumes and supply chain efficiencies to increase profitability. 

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) has implemented Farm to Institution (F2I) programs in North Carolina for many years. Through this work, we have identified and documented several barriers to establishing successful supply chains, including the volume, type, availability and distribution of products. However, we have never intentionally coordinated local food procurement among multiple F2I programs. We hypothesize that F2I supply chain coordination will generate strategies that can address the challenges observed when programs are implemented individually. We anticipate these strategies might include specifications for aesthetically imperfect products (“seconds”), a system for aggregating orders and production planning to increase the volume purchased, and shared distribution routes to reduce costs. 

We propose piloting and evaluating a coordinated F2I approach in Robeson County, North Carolina, a rural county with the highest Native American population in the state. We will work with a newly formed cooperative of farmers who are members of the Lumbee Tribe to assess their readiness and provide technical assistance to facilitate institutional market access and promote climate resilience agricultural practices to reduce costs. We will conduct a market assessment and supply chain analysis across these four institution types to develop strategies that streamline F2I local food procurement. We will conduct formative and summative evaluations to make mid project adjustments, and identify best practices. Finally, we will work with NC Cooperative Extension’s Local Food Program Team to create a F2I Work Group that will develop a F2I Toolkit for Extension Agents, which we will disseminate through Extension trainings, webinars, conference presentations, etc.

1. Assess Market and Analyze Supply Chains: We will analyze community institution markets (Early Care and Education, School, University, and Senior Services) in order to understand institutions’ capacity, requirements, and delivery needs. We will map current supply chains by taking into account both institutions’ and farmers’ capacity and locations in order to identify strategies that create efficiencies. The market assessment and supply chain analysis will inform the development of an integrated Farm to Institution market channel/supply chain.
2. Assess and Support Farmer Readiness: We will assess small-scale, historically marginalized, limited resource farmer readiness to sell to community institutions, including what agricultural practices they currently employ. Based on input from participating farmers, we will provide training and establish systems to support regenerative agricultural practices that reduce costs, and will also prepare farmers to sell to institutions by offering GAP and post-harvest handling trainings. 
3. Develop and Pilot Farm to Institution Supply Chains: We will design a pilot project that will implement the integrated Farm to Institution supply chain strategies identified in Objective 1, once participating farmers have received training and are prepared to sell to these markets (Objective 2). These supply chain strategies will streamline sourcing from small to mid size, historically marginalized farmers by matching supply and demand and coordinating distribution routes, among other strategies that embed efficiencies into the system. 
4. Evaluate Pilot: We will conduct a formative evaluation after the pilot has been implemented for one year. This evaluation will be both process-based, to understand participants’ experiences and where the pilot could be improved, as well as measuring key indicators to assess whether the project is on track to meet goals (see Evaluation section for a list of indicators and metrics). Based on this formative evaluation, we will make mid-project adjustments. We will conduct a summative evaluation at the end of the project that will allow us to report on progress made towards key indicators, as well as to  develop a set of best practices and lessons learned to aid in project replication. 
5. Create and Disseminate Resources: We will engage with NC Cooperative Extension’s Local Food Program team to bring together a Work Group of campus-based extension specialists and county-based extension agents to develop a Farm to Institution Toolkit. This Toolkit will house materials about how to facilitate an integrated Farm to Institution procurement system, using replicable tools and lessons learned from this project. We will also include a section on climate-smart agricultural practices that can reduce producers’ costs, which should be implemented together with selling to institutional markets to achieve desired sustainability goals, as well as post-harvest handling to prepare producers to sell to institutional markets. We will promote this toolkit through CEFS’ communication channels, as well as through webinars with partner organizations and presentations at key researcher and practitioner-oriented conferences. We will also develop a train-the-trainer session for Extension agents based on the toolkit, and will offer this training in each of NC State Extension’s five districts in order to promote farmer adoption of the model in other counties.