Food Hubs and Locally Farmed Food

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Food hubs link consumers with locally farmed food From Publication; Written by Lisa Rathke

Move over farmers’ markets. More than 300 food hubs around the country are also providing small farms another outlet to sell locally raised food to consumers.

There’s no one model for a food hub — it depends on the market, the location and what it is grown in that area. Some collect food from farms and dole it out to customers in weekly deliveries. Other hubs help consumers, restaurants, colleges and institutions to source food online. But producers, consumers and experts all say food hubs have an important thing in common: it’s an efficient way to get locally raised food to those clamoring for it.

“We’ve seen in the last few years in particular as local and region food systems have grown and become not only larger but kind of more sophisticated that there has been a need for sort of the logistics of moving food from the field to the consumers. And food hubs kind of fill that space,” said Doug O’Brien, deputy undersecretary for rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency spent about $25 million from 2009-2013 supporting food hubs.

The number of food hubs has doubled over the last six years, and many are in urban areas, with the Northeast leading the way. Some operate as nonprofits, others are for-profit or producer-consumer cooperatives. Some are modeled after CSAs, or community supported agriculture, where consumers pay up front for food throughout the season…

Read the full article at: https://bigstory.ap.org/article/691a7cefb6d1477da16d240f92d63f13/food-hubs-link-consumers-locally-farmed-food