Local Food Movement Expected To Grow By $11.7B

USDA has created new economic opportunities in the growing market for local and regional foods. USDA supports the industry through investments in the form of production research, credit and conservation assistance, infrastructure investments that connect farmers and consumers, and strategies to increase access to healthy foods in rural and urban communities. These investments have helped the market for local food grow to an estimated $11.7 billion in 2014. Between the fiscal years 2009-2014, USDA invested more than $800 million in more than 29,100 local and regional food businesses and infrastructure projects.

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The Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative (KYF2) coordinates this work across USDA. The KYF2 website is a one-stop shop for resources and information about USDA programs and support for local and regional food systems. In addition to featuring information about relevant grants, loans, research and other tools, the KYF2 website features the Compass, which maps more than 4,500 federally funded local food projects on the Compass Map from USDA and 11 other federal agencies between fiscal years 2009-2014. All of the data on the map are downloadable, searchable, and updated annually.

Some of these projects include:

Those that helped farmers and ranchers tap into new, local markets:

  • Between 2009-2014, the number of Value Added Producer Grants awarded to local food projects jumped by more than 500%. During 2013-14, USDA dedicated nearly $11 million — nearly half of the awarded funds — to 116 unique local food projects through this program.
  • Producers constructed nearly 15,000 high tunnels on farms around the country between 2010-2015.
  • Provided nearly 15,000 microloans to farmers. This program provides smaller loans of up to $50,000 for small-scale, diversified producers and 70% of these loans have gone to beginning farmers.
  • Expanded consumers’ access to information about local food through our National Farmers Market Directory, which now lists nearly 8,500 farmers markets nationwide. USDA has also launched several new Local Food Directories for Community Supported Agriculture enterprises, food hubs, and on-farm stores.
  • Launched a new program through the Agricultural Marketing Service’s Market News to gather and report prices for local food and organic products. This data can be used by Farm Service Agency loan officers and  the Non-Insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program to provide the right level of coverage for farms selling into these premium markets.

Those that improved infrastructure to connect producers with new markets:

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  • Made more than 900 investments in local food infrastructure between 2009-2015 — including food hubs, local processing facilities and distribution networks — to help connect farmers and consumers through strong regional supply chains and create jobs along the way.
  • Supported a near doubling of the number of food hubs between 2009-2014, with more than 300 now operational around the country.
  • Invested in direct sales opportunities like farmers markets. The number of farmers markets has grown by 81% nationally since 2008. Since 2009, USDA has helped more consumers connect directly with farmers through the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP), providing $60 million in assistance for more than 900 projects nationwide. The 2014 Farm Bill expanded FMPP to include the Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP), which supports other local food marketing channels like food hubs, distribution networks, and CSAs. LFPP has funded more than 350 projects totaling nearly $25 million since it launched in 2014.

Those that helped improve access to healthy, local food:

  • Expanded access to healthy foods in underserved communities by increasing the number of farmers markets that accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. More than 6,000 farmers markets and direct marketing farmers now accept EBT, and SNAP redemption at farmers markets nationwide rose from $4 million in 2009 to more than $18 million in 2014.
  • Invested in 221 projects in 49 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands more than the past three years that help to create new marketing opportunities for farmers and ranchers in schools through the Farm to School grant program, which began in 2013 and is funded through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. According to preliminary data from USDA’s Farm to School Census, schools spent nearly $600 million on local food purchases during the 2013-2014 school year.
  • Supported communities that use local food as a strategy to reduce food insecurity. Between fiscal years 2009-2014, USDA has provided $28 million to 154 Community Food Projects in 48 states to help communities improve access to healthy, local food.

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Avatar for keithsrv keithsrv says:

One part of government seems to promote while the food safety fascists seem to hurt worse. Give it time, they will find a way to crush local food. Need to change this trend and teach a bit of responsibility and cure problems through education not crushing regulation and legal liability. A lot of it is about power and tort issues, not real safety.

Avatar for Dr. P Dr. P says:

There is no evidence that local food is in any way healthier than other food. There is also no consistent definition of what local is. Farmers markets are basically unregulated with regards to food safety. The produce is usually higher priced than that of traditional markets. These farms are publicly subsidized well beyond support from USDA. They are major unfair competition to the conventional grocery stores that provide thousands of jobs for local communities. Farmers market vendors pay almost no rent, no taxes, no insurance, and do not support the local community like brick and mortar stores do.

Farmers markets do have many positive attributes but why do they need so much help? Can’t they survive on the merits of their products without subsidies and without significant unfair advantages over other merchants? Shouldn’t they be required to play by the same basic rules of business without essentially free rent and no accountability for food safety, health department, worker’s compensation insurance, a fair share of taxes that benefit the community, liability insurance etc.?

Avatar for Joe Scrimger Joe Scrimger says:

Dr. P’s comments I guess are an opposing view, but just not a very good or educated one. The USDA’s budget and subsidies to Agriculture over the last 50 years has given that box store a little advantage, that for some reason isn’t mentioned. Local food that has been grown as food, versus a commodity market does have certain quality factors to it, that certain mass produced food just doesn’t have. There is a well known but not talked about much factor of passive immunity based on local food or feed passing on to it’s consumer that is diluted in proportion to how far the food travels, that really has not been considered in our industrial food model. A farmer that knows about the real value of “milk and honey” will be able to share this so important food factor, some doctors won’t and their ‘facts’ are probably not going to stop the public’s movement to a food system based upon local/regional food.

Avatar for Katie Nixon Katie Nixon says:

Let me tell you about my farm. Its a small farm, and we mostly sell at the farmers market (for over 5 years). We are a business, an LLC. We have a food safety plan, product liability insurance, pay weekly rent for our space at the farmers market (which takes us 2 hours one-way to drive), and we collect sales tax on every FM sale and remit it to the state every month. The only time we have received a government subsidy is when we enrolled in the NRCS high tunnel program and were re-reimbursed $4500 to build a $10,000 high tunnel in 2011. We are not unique, there are many small farmers out there who follow these rules and run their farms as serious businesses. Granted there are probably some who do not, but I don’t know those farmers and cannot speak on their behalf.

You want to talk about subsidies. . . the article says that from 2009-2014 USDA spent $800 million on local food projects (which by the way are not subsidies that are very competitive grants that take a lot of time to write and are very competitive. They also usually require some sort of matching funding sometimes up to 100% of the cost). In 2012, alone $15.8 billion was paid out to row crop farmers by the USDA.

The fact is small farms are not making it. if we want to have thriving agriculture in all of the United States, not just California and Florida, small farmers need all the help they can get. This is not just about them either is about national food security and spreading risk. People want to know who is growing their food.

Avatar for John Pandol John Pandol says:

I am a large scale fresh fruit farmer and marketer. I have noticed in editorial comments in the produce press recently that the honeymoon is over on farmer direct sales, be they farmers market, CSA , swap meets, internet sales or other modalities. If we did a supply chain analysis for optimum food distribution, it would not be a open air market supplied from pickup tailgates open 3 hours twice a week. All of our big production companies today started small, and small scale farming is in a crisis. There are very few niches where the business model works. Getting new people interesting in farming is difficult when the failure rate is high and you need a lot of money to even start. I salute Madam Nixon that she renders to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but I believe she is the exception. I’ve said when an tax return is part of the package in order to gain access to a farmers market, I’ll back off.

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