Increasing Farm Success in Local Food Markets in the Deep South

This report from the Wallace Center is intended to be a resource for farmers, farmer groups, and entrepreneurs to learn of new markets, stimulate collaboration, and encourage strategies to begin to address issues that significantly affect limited resource farmers' ability to meet scaled-up demand from institutional and wholesale buyers for local fresh produce. It identifies opportunities to address the on-farm, market, and infrastructure barriers small farms face in accessing these markets in the Deep South, including: providing capacity building and technical assistance directly linked to market activity; facilitating collaboration among farmers to share resources and achieve scale; catalyzing new, and working with existing, produce aggregators; moving beyond direct markets into local institutions and businesses, and varying the types of product that meet the needs of high and low-end customers; aligning crop production to market windows; expanding use of organic production practices; and fully utilizing hoop house technology, among others.

Deep South Local and Regional Food Systems Resources for Farmers, Aggregators and Distributors

This Wallace Center publication is a compilation of resources and tools related to farmer training; farm operations; financial management and business planning; market access; and business planning with a focus on Mississippi and Alabama.

This 16-page SARE bulletin is intended to be a resource for agricultural educators, heads of community development and agricultural organizations, government agency staff and others who want to better connect with and improve the lives of farmers and ranchers who remain hard to reach. The free bulletin features nine success stories from around the country as a jumping off point for adapting innovative programs to varied areas. It also provides "how-to" ideas for educators, socio-economic characteristics/barriers to working with varied audiences, proven teaching methods and successful connection strategies.