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Learn more about Value Chain
Partnerships for a Sustainable Agriculture
The Value Chain Partnerships for a Sustainable Agriculture (VCPSA)
project has attracted compliments and support during its
first year anniversary celebrated in February.
A two-day visit in March by project director Gail Imig from
the W.K. Kellogg Foundation brought together many players
and participants, including CEO Rick Schneiders and vice
presidents from the SYSCO Corporation.
VCPSA is one of eight projects in the Higher
Education-Community Partnerships program of the Kellogg Food
and Society Initiative. The project, selected from more than
120 proposals, received $660,000 in grants. Rich Pirog, who
leads the Leopold Center’s marketing and food systems
initiative, is VCPSA project director.
“The purpose of the Foundation’s Higher Education-Community
Partnerships program is to show how we can use relationships
between the university and people in the community to get
things done,” Imig said during a closing luncheon. “And I
tell you what, it’s happening here.”
In its first full year, VCPSA began two working groups,
launched a web site and funded more than a dozen research
and development projects. Other activities are planned for
farmers and others interested in building networks for
sustainably raised Iowa products.
Each of the three working groups focuses on a different
production, processing and distribution network, or value
chain. The Pork Niche Market Working Group (PNMWG) began
nearly two years ago, the BioEconomy Working Group was
initiated in August, and the Regional Food Systems Working
Group started meeting in October.
Groups are using funds from the Leopold Center and other
partners to leverage additional grants. Seventy partners and
organizations are involved in the Value Chains Partnership
project.
In its second round of grants, the PNMWG funded eight
projects totaling more than $25,000. Work includes winter
farrowing that uses a greenhouse as an outer structure,
supplemental heating systems for hoop and deep-bedded
systems, transportation logistics, a series of producer
meetings in Des Moines and southwest Iowa, development of a
resource guide for new product development, and evaluation
costs for a USDA-SARE funded farrowing project.
The BioEconomy Working Group awarded grants totaling $28,000
for four projects. They involve Poweshiek County producers
who are studying the feasibility of raising kenaf as an
alternative crop in Iowa. The group is working with HON
Industries of Muscatine to make a natural fiber mat that
would replace fiberglass in office partitions. Another
project looks at the logistics of collecting and delivering
one million tons of corn stover annually from farms along
the Missouri River to use as feedstock for a biobased
processing plant.
The Regional Food Systems Working Group, led by Pirog,
awarded nearly $25,000 for four projects in January. The
research includes measuring Iowans’ attitudes about regional
food systems, the economic impacts of farmers markets in
Iowa, and local food purchases in and around Black Hawk
County. A fourth project will focus on local food efforts in
Allamakee and Winneshiek counties.
The VCPSA web site, www.valuechains.org, will include
research reports as they are completed, dates for upcoming
meetings and conferences, and news reports and newsletters
produced by the working groups.
Other major partners in the VCPSA project are Practical
Farmers of Iowa, Iowa State University Extension, the Henry
A. Wallace Endowed Chair for Sustainable Agriculture, and
the ISU College of Agriculture. |