SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
My capstone was a literature review of agriculture and the state of local food in Illinois. With an increase
in farm size and fewer farmers engaged in agriculture, there is no better time to reverse this trend and, in
the process, grow the ability of agriculture in Illinois for local food availability. Regional food hubs are
one possible solution to improving the availability of local food in Illinois and there will be an
examination of a few key food hubs and co-ops to glean some of the best qualities new hubs might benefit
with using in their operation. A review of hubs and co-ops that have closed and what lessons have been
learned. This review recommends creating a business plan for starting a food hub, exploring choices
available for new food hubs in Illinois. Working with other existing food hubs or cooperatives should not
be overlooked in this analysis.
Overview of the project and process with specific mention of original project objectives.
1. Develop a possible solution for improving local foods movement in Region
a. Positive/Good Aspects of local foods
i. Increase the acreage for fruit and vegetable production of local foods in the Illinois
region
1. New local foods farmers – new to farming
2. Conversion of conventional farmers
ii. Decrease food deserts
iii. Initiatives for the education of local foods to the public
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
b. Areas needing improvement
i. The marketing potential for local food farmers
ii. Increase in farm subsidies for local foods
iii. Food safety
iv. Increase food availability
c. To study potential aggregation, processing, and distribution infrastructure gaps inhibiting the
flow of whole and minimally processed agricultural and food products from small and
midscale Illinois producers to domestic wholesale food buyers
2. Define Interview/Survey the involved stakeholders for the local food movement to determine their
various opinions
a. Determine the appropriate stakeholders
b. Analyze data gleaned from shareholders
c. To suggest opportunities for investment to advance the development of a solid regional food
economy in Illinois
3. Define possible plans for improved solutions for implementing a local foods improvement plan
Approach:
•
Research of current practices
o Are the current co-ops, such as the Dill Pickle and the Sugar Beet Co-op effective in
promoting local foods in the region – evaluation of coop effectiveness
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
o Evaluation of Farmer training programs in Illinois and the effectiveness of program
success
o Farmer success and failure for:
▪
Small farms
▪
Medium to large farms
▪
Issues and impediments for farmers
▪
Marketing evaluation
▪
Distribution system and issues for food products
o Evaluation of Food Distribution systems for local foods
▪
Farmers markets
▪
CSA’s
▪
Food Hubs
▪
Farm stands or stores
▪
Direct sales to consumers, businesses, restaurants, schools, and hospitals
o Evaluation of Food Sovereignty and Food Security in the region
▪
Food Desert evaluation
▪
Neighborhood gardens
o Organic vs non-organic food production issues
•
Possible lack of cohesive organizations or groups that are effectively distributing the local foods
produced
•
.Local food distribution seems limited in scope, purpose, and effectiveness for all parties involved
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
Deliverables:
The deliverables will depend on the results of the research portion of the Capstone looking into the
Illinois Region Local Food Movement.
o If food coops or food hubs are needed, a business plan for creating or starting such an
enterprise could be part of this capstone project.
o Report on the results of the interviews with stakeholders including:
▪
Farmers
▪
Groups in the Chicago Urban area
ii. Project impact indicators: What were the outcomes of the Project?
Recommend that a feasibility study be done creating a business plan to be used for possibly opening
operations that will promote the advancement of local food access in Illinois. Other outcomes include the
creation of this reflection paper and the capstone document.
Lessons Learned for the Transformation of Illinois local food
Challenges to Success
One of the many challenges food hubs face that has proven to be the most challenging is
providing a steady reliable stream of local fresh foods from area farmers. While many
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
things contribute this and include not enough farmers producing the fresh food, the right
assortment of foods that the suppliers want on a regular basis, high enough quality of
food, properly picked, packed, cooled and stored food.
Education is probably the best route to enabling the food hub to have that reliable supply.
But another challenge found in many food hubs is the variability of customer needs
especially at the beginning of a relationship between the food hub and customers.
Education
When looking at education, it is multi-faceted in nature, to cultivate having enough
farmers to procure enough food there will need to be a new farmer training program or
use one of the new farmer training programs available in the state. One of the farmer
training programs is in the northwest portion of the state near Rockford, IL and one is
in east-central Illinois in Champaign. Another choice is to use the program from the
New Generation Illinois Farmer training program developed in 2012 more than likely
need some updating.
The other portion of the training would be ongoing, but include planning for wholesale
production, food safety training, GAP training, social and environmental training, and
meet and greets with customers. Other farmer training might include, bookkeeping
and record keeping systems, human resource training, farm safety, to name a few.
The farmer training at Local Food Hub seems to be an integral part of the farming
operation. One reason for that is the 60 acres farm they own. It would make it so
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
much easier to develop farmers to mimic the needs of the food hub instead of retraining them if they are existing farmers or were trained somewhere else.
The introduction of production scheduling at Local Food Hub has enabled them to
better meet their customers' needs on an ongoing basis throughout the year. Another
fundamental practice is to buy products outside the area when the weather does not
allow local farmers to have to grow a product to meet the needs.
Another option for providing products to customers in out of season time periods
include canning and freezing of excess food during the growing season.
Marketing
Marketing is one area where food hubs in Illinois have had issues. The Quad City
food hub and the Galesburg Food hub both failed predominantly due to not having a
steady base of revenue. The Quad City food hub relied on grants for personnel costs
in the 8th to the 10th year of existence, not sustainable. The Galesburg food hub did
not have enough customers to sustain the cost of running the food hub.
Financial Success
Financial success has traditionally been measured by having enough money to pay the
bills and continue operations and fund objectives of the business. Increasingly, the
triple bottom line has become more important especially in local foods and
specifically in many non-profit food hub operations. The two other tenants of the
triple bottom line are a social and environmental success.
Social Success
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
Consumer Education – Value of Local Food – Local Food Hub Example include meet
and greets with customers, visits to the farm to institutional customers and consumers.
Picnics and farm tours, tastings of products. Newer ideas could be cooking classes,
gardening classes, etc.
Environmental Success
Environmental success has been measured by the reduction of food miles traveled for
foods because more food is grown and sold closer to the customers, therefore,
reducing the food miles traveled and thus a reduction in fossil fuels used.
The following food hubs/co-ops were used as examples of food hubs/co-ops that are successful
examples:
o Stewards of the Land
o Hub on the Hill
o LaMantanita Food Hub
o Local Food (a food hub)
o ECO (Eastern Carolina Organics)
o The Southern Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative
The following food hubs/co-ops were used as examples of food hubs/co-ops that failed and are
examples of lessons of operational practices to avoid:
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
•
Quad Cities Food Hub
•
Producer’s and Buyers food Co-op
•
Grasshoppers Distribution
•
Oklahoma Food Cooperative
•
Pilot Mountain Pride co-op
Details of the preceding example food hubs and food-co-ops are available in the capstone document.
Jo Daviess Virtual Food Hub and the Kane County Food Hub are examples of newer food hubs in Illinois
having very limited experience with operations. Their value in improving local food availability rests in
the ability to talk with them about their challenges, opportunities and changes they made to their
businesses. Collaboration amongst the local food industry stakeholders, both within the same food value
chain and the entire food system in Illinois.
iii. Lessons learned, with a discussion of any differences in original Project
goal(s) and objectives to final Project outcomes (impact) and
deliverables.
Improving the number of farms and farmers producing local food products will benefit Illinois. The hill to
climb will not be easy but is a doable project that can help improve the health of residents, reduce the
environmental footprint by reducing food miles traveled, improve the social lifestyles of farmers and
residents by promoting meetings between farmers and customers Education of potential customers of the
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
goodness of local food is an important mission he needs to be continued for increasing interest in local
food.
Many initiatives are underway with the main purpose of improving local food availability in Illinois.
Consumer education initiates for learning to garden, farmer training programs in the Chicago area for
helping disadvantaged, veterans, just people down on their luck with the hope they can become farmers
feeding those in the urban landscape, especially in food desert areas. There are also farm training
programs for generally young entrepreneurs desiring to enter the local food movement. These programs
are longer-term programs and usually offer the budding farmer's internship opportunities providing reallife learning experiences.
Many food hubs exist today demonstrating various levels of success and impact on the improvement of
local food availability. One of the largest hurdles for food hubs is the year-round availability of food
sourced from local sources. During the months where local production is not possible, season extension
techniques, value-added processing and greenhouse growing need to be seriously considered.
Some concerns with starting a food hub include the viability of the financial plan being sustainable in the
long run. Many operations in local food rely on grants and/or loans to start-up operations. While this is a
great resource, relying on this long term can be fatal. An example of this is the Quad Cities Food Hub, in
operation for 10 years relying on grants to pay employee salaries. That worked for them until they could
find no more money and they shut down their operations (Hancock, 2017). Grants certainly have a place
in local food, it must be leveraged and eventually not needed for continuing operations.
Farmland in Illinois is not an issue, the issue is trying to convert the traditional corn and soybean farms
into diversified farms producing fruits, vegetables, and grains. Moving away from the traditional farming
techniques considered to be non-sustainable would help improve our environment
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
Gardens, CSA’s, school gardens all have a place in the local food movement but likely will not make a
huge impact. CSA’s have such a low retention rate and in the last few years, we have seen a decline in
the number of people buying food. The use of a CSA card and allowing customers to purchase what they
want when they want it seems to be more and more appealing to customers. CSA’s using these formats
have seen steady sales increases and a higher year to year retention rate.
Marketing of consistent, high-quality products poses a challenge for food hubs, especially when
relationships are in the formative stages. The inability to balance the supply and demand for products has
been difficult for many food hubs, in the beginning, resulting in loss of sales and even failure of the
business.
My recommendation is to conduct a feasibility study to develop a food hub operation with the following
goals:
Operational:
•
Sound Business plan that is well thought out and comprehensive
•
Solid financial resources for carrying the business through the early stages of business operation
•
The hiring of competent staff with adequate experience in local food success
•
Study of selling to other food hubs or co-ops as a basis for the business operation
Farm:
Ideally, a farm associated with the food hub to provide training for new farmers/Re-training for existing
farmers on the standard operating procedures for growing food for the hub
Social:
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
•
Using Local Food Hub as a model, develop social business qualities to include
•
Events for educating food hub customers
•
Healthy food education programs and seminars for community groups and organizations, schools
and other institutional organizations
It is my belief after conducting the research for this capstone, many food hubs are beginning to look at
working with other hubs that are better at doing the task than they are. A good example of this is Local
Food Hub teaming up in June 2019, with 4P Foods for handling their distribution network starting in June
2019 (4P Foods, 2014).
Specific examples contained in the previous section entitled “Lessons Learned for the Transformation of
Illinois local food” are good guides detailing what lessons can be learned from both successful and
unsuccessful food hub and co-ops. While all items covered might not be applicable to a specific area,
many of the lessons will help a new food hub of co-op starting out in business.
A food hub will most definitely help Illinois and specifically, the Chicago metropolitan area grows local
food availability. This will be a win for consumers that will begin to have fresher, tastier and more
nutritious food available for meals. Farmers will benefit because more food will be needed, increasing the
number of farmers needed and potentially increasing sales possibilities for existing local food farmers.
Everyone in the state will benefit because more food dollars will stay in the local area instead of going to
another state.
Environmentally, the immediate area of Illinois will experience a reduction in CO2 emissions because
there will be fewer food miles when we purchase locally. Socially when we purchase food locally, we
will experience the development of new acquaintances. With more farming of local food, there will be
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
less conventional farming done, potentially reducing the effects of fertilizer and pesticide use in Illinois.
Everyone benefits!
Recommend creating a business plan for determining the best path going forward for the creation of one
or more food hubs in Illinois. Paying attention to determining the marketing needs of the hub are critical
for success. Everyone cannot sell to the same customers, there is a finite amount available and possibly
working together with existing food hubs or co-ops might provide the answer to success. When
formulating the business plan, researching existing and traditional distributions methods for potentially
locating a solid base of customers for purchasing
Networking opportunities cultivated and please also note if there were any changes in the student’s
employment position(s) from the beginning of the MSFS Program to the end with job titles.
Some of the networking opportunities exist include conferences that I attended including an annual
conference sponsored by the Illinois Farm Bureau, entitled Live Local. The three-day event bringing
local farmers, local organizations and local businesses together for networking and help build the needed
infrastructure for a long-lasting marketplace for farmers in Illinois. The conference was started in 2017
and has a great mixture of participants and topics appropriate for local food issues (Illinois Farm Bureau,
2019).
Another conference is MOSES, a three-day conference that starts with a full day “University” class
offering many topics pertinent for local and organic food topics followed by two days featuring over 60
workshop sessions in six different time slots. Numerous opportunities to network are built-in to the
conference. I have been attending the conference for five years and one of the best networking
opportunities is during lunch or dinner where over 2,500 attendees eat lunch in the same dining hall eating
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at long banquet tables. It provides a great opportunity to chat with various stakeholders from across the
Midwest (Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service, 2019).
Current Employment (Start of Capstone Experience):
Coordinator, Horticulture Department
Sustainable Agriculture Instructor
Triton College
River Grove, IL
Current Employment (Conclusion of Capstone Experience)
Retired as of November 2018
Post-Graduation Plans (career and/or academic goals):
Based on the results of this capstone I would like to become more involved with the process to
improve local foods in the Illinois region by creating a business plan for improving local food
access in Illinois. This includes food hub and /or co-op businesses and development of education
programs for educating consumers on the value of local food and farmers on profitable farming
operations with fruits, vegetables, livestock, and grain crops.
This plan will be developed with the cooperation of the extension service from the University of
Illinois, existing food hubs and coops, charitable organizations involved in the local food
movement, governmental agencies, food banks and similar local food involved agencies.
v. Ways the Project enhanced the student’s professional and post-MSFS
academic goals.
Because of the detailed analysis of the local food scene in Illinois conducted as part of the capstone,
further research will be needed to create a business plan for improving local food access in Illinois
through the possible use of one or more food hubs. In addition, analysis of increasing the number of
available farmers, new local food customers, and farmers through educational efforts.
vi. MSFS coursework that contributed to a successful Project and, if any
courses were taken outside of the MSFS to meet a skill need, please
note that here.
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in Illinois
Refer to Vii below for coursework that contributed to the success of the project.
I did participate in a three-year-long new farmer training program entitled New Generation Illinois Farmer
Training that was designed to help interested residents of Illinois learn many facets of becoming a local
food farmer. Classes met one time a month for seven hours during the first year and the second and third
year we were able to farm ¼ acre at one of the University research farms across the state. The farming
was essentially an internship program allowing for the real-life experience to learn many skills needed for
growing, processing and selling products to actual customers you work on creating a market for
(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014).
vii. Relevance of Capstone to MSFS Program objectives (see MSFS
Learning Outcomes in Appendix A).
MSFS Learning Objectives
Acquire a solid foundation in the historical context, economic realities, ecological
considerations, policy aspects, and cultural values that have created our
contemporary food systems, including regional differences.
Develop a solid understanding of best practices in sustainable agricultural production
in the vegetable, fruit, and livestock sectors, including the distinctions in production
methods within different scales and bioregions.
Develop the ability to analyze different components of a food system -- production,
processing, distribution, preparation, and consumption -- in order to assess that food
system's strengths and weaknesses with regard to economic, ecological, and social
sustainability.
Learn how to leverage food system change within businesses, regional communities,
the nonprofit sector, and/or policymaking organizations.
Learn to use the interdisciplinary knowledge from their masters coursework to
research, analyze, and develop potential solutions for food system issues in their
home bioregions.
Most courses helped develop a solid foundation to evaluate local, regional and in some cases world-wide
differences needed to create a meaningful and successful capstone project. The agriculture and Energy
class (SFS 6030) did not contribute to any portion of my capstone project.
I thought the arranged order of classes built on one subject to another throughout the entire program, with
the above-noted exception. Learning about our bioregion and others in the classes certainly enhanced my
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ability to comprehend, appreciate differences, and understand how local food worked in many areas of the
United States and in Italy. The information regarding Italy came from the Turning Traditions into
Markets (SFS 6090)
viii. Any suggestions to others for the MSFS Capstone Project/process.
My only advice is to determine a schedule and stick with it to completion. This is a great
opportunity to dig deeper into an issue with local food you are passionate about and learn from
other stakeholders how to possibly improve local foods in your state or region.
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SFS 6091 Reflection Paper - Improving Local Food Availability in
Illinois
References
4P Foods. (2014). local food with a purpose - 4P Foods. Retrieved June 23, 2019, from
http://4pfoods.com/about-us/
Hancock, A. (2017, October 7). Quad-Cities Food Hub to close in December: “There’s less of a
need for us.” Retrieved April 24, 2019, from The Quad-City Times website:
https://qctimes.com/news/local/quad-cities-food-hub-to-close-in-december-theres/article_2b61a976-b24d-52d5-b62f-8316d0a981b4.html
Illinois Farm Bureau. (2019). Upcoming Live Local Events. Retrieved July 12, 2019, from Live
Local Conference website: http://www.ilfb.org/get-involved/events/live-local/
Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service. (2019, April). Retrieved July 12, 2019, from
MOSES Conference website: https://mosesorganic.org/publications/broadcasternewspaper/moses-2019-highlights/
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (2014). New Illinois Fruit and Vegetable Farmers.
Retrieved July 12, 2019, from New Illinois Fruit and Vegetable Farmers website:
http://www.newillinoisfarmers.org/
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