Project Overview
Commodities
Practices
- Education and Training: networking, technical assistance
- Farm Business Management: farm-to-institution, farm-to-restaurant, marketing management, new enterprise development, value added
- Sustainable Communities: food access and security, food hubs, local and regional food systems, new business opportunities, partnerships
Proposal abstract:
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.
Project objectives from proposal:
- Support onboarding eight farmers onto the Wholesale Ready Marketplace through technical training and on-farm support to implement best practices in wholesale production.
- Learn from the experiences of farmers transitioning to selling their produce into the wholesale market to develop case studies to share with other farmers.