Report Cites Challenges of Local Food Distribution Systems

Consumers’ growing appetite for locally produced food presents both an opportunity and a problem for local growers. Demand is fast outpacing what roadside stands and farmers’ markets can supply, but supermarkets and restaurants are geared to expect substantial volume, consistent quality, and year-round delivery—all things that small-scale, seasonal operations struggle to provide. Correcting this mismatch won’t require bigger farms, but it will require larger-scale systems for getting the food to market, according to a new report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Extension.

The report, “Scaling Up: Meeting the Demand for Local Food,” takes a look at 11 enterprises and organizations that are trying to fill that gap. These groups represent a variety of business models and geographic regions, but they report a similar set of problems in their efforts to aggregate and market the products of many small farms.

Concerns cited in the report include:

• maintaining the information on where and how the food was grown, a reason many consumers are willing to pay higher prices for local food. But when food from many small producers gets lumped into a big shipment, that information can be lost.
• maintaining consistent quality for marketability, shelf life and food safety, also difficult to track if a retailer’s shipment is consolidated from many small farms.
• seasonality of production, that is how local growers who can only produce the food seasonally supply a retailer who needs the product year round.

The report includes stories of things that have worked and not worked and is intended to provide new business start-ups with some guidance.

Source: IFT

UW Report