Training and On-Farm Support to Onboard Farmers to the Wholesale Ready Program

Commodities

Practices

REAP Food Group has created a
local Wholesale Ready Marketplace (WholesaleReady.org),
with funding from a USDA LFPP
grant, to facilitate
purchasing wholesale quantities of local produce and value-add
products by local institutional buyers in southern Wisconsin. The
Marketplace launched in
July 2022, and the first
cohort of 10 farmers are onboarding to the Marketplace in order
to open for sales in Spring 2024. 

Through feedback from the first
cohort of farmers, we are improving our onboarding process to
include resources farmers who need additional support to be ready
for wholesale. These resources include additional technical
training and on-farm support in implementing best practices for
wholesale production, and requires more time commitment from our
staff and farmers to support the transition to wholesale
production. This need was disproportionately shared by black,
Hmoob, and indigenous farmers who are growing specialty
crops. 

The Wholesale Ready Marketplace
is a critical piece of the infrastructure of the local food
system in southern Wisconsin, and can potentially contribute
$1,300,000 of locally-produced food to our food system while
supporting the growth of diverse, sustainable farms. 

1. Support onboarding eight
   farmers onto the Wholesale Ready Marketplace through technical
   training and on-farm support to implement best practices in
   wholesale production.
2. Learn from the
   experiences of farmers transitioning to selling their produce
   into the wholesale market to develop case studies to share with
   other farmers.