Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

New web site provides support for local food efforts

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2009

Imagine one place where you can get tips on buying meat directly from a farmer, connect to local food groups in Iowa, explore postharvesthandling techniques, discover ways to manage niche pork feed costs, and learn how to use goats to control weeds.

Your one-stop information center is valuechains.org, the new Web site for Value Chain Partnerships (VCP), an Iowa-based network for food and agriculture working groups that is coordinated by the Leopold Center. The new Web site features reports from more than 60 projects funded by the five VCP working groups during the past seven years. Projects range from multi-county surveys to gauge demand for local products to workshops on how to market niche beef. Small business owners, farmers, processors, distributors and others from across each supply chain who focus on environmental and community stewardship are part of each group.

Here’s an overview of the latest resources at valuechains.org.

Pork Niche Market Working Group: This group has funded more than 30 research and development projects. New resources include eight strategies for niche pork producers to use in managing high feed costs, also recent findings were reported from a herd health survey of 26 niche pork herds in the Midwest.

Regional Food Systems Working Group: Find out who’s working on local food efforts in Iowa. This group supports six regional food organizations and, along with current mini-grants, works in more than 50 Iowa counties.

Small Meat Processors Working Group: Working with ISU Extension and other partners, this group has produced several publications, including a guide to buying whole animals directly from producers or local lockers, and where to find small-scale poultry processors in Iowa.

Fruit and Vegetable Working Group: The newest resource is a comprehensive Post-Harvest Handling Decision Tool for vegetables, with details on handling bunched greens, tender crops such as tomatoes or summer squash, dry-cured crops such as onions and garlic, and root crops such as potatoes and carrots. The tool also has information about equipment and packing shed considerations, and food safety.

Grass-Based Livestock Working Group: Just completed are five case studies, each showing a different aspect of managed grazing for grasslands improvement. The case studies looked at bison in the Broken Kettle Grasslands Preserve, grazing goats to control weeds, how to increase bird and wildlife habitat in pastures, special considerations for grazing CRP land, and using grassbanks during pasture renovation.

Core partners in VCP are Practical Farmers of Iowa, the Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the ISU College of Business and ISU Extension. The VCP project also is supported by a grant from the Wallace Center at Winrock International.

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2009