Traveling 'beyond food miles'

It was 1997 and the request from the Leopold Center to the dining services staff at ISU’s Scheman Building was highly unusual. Could they serve Iowa-grown food at the Center’s 10th anniversary conference?

The Center had just started to explore the practices and values associated with organic agriculture as well as food systems that were more closely linked with the farmers who grew the crops or raised the livestock. It was time, Center staff decided, to “walk the talk” and serve food that could be sourced directly to Iowa farmers. The Center also encouraged other groups who received Center funds for workshops and conferences to do the same.

Top 10 Local Food Issues (and what the Center is doing about them)
	Profitability – 7 projects examining production and marketing costs of various food enterprises Business planning – 4 projects to develop training and education programs that provide farmers with the tools they need to plan and implement new food businesses Transaction costs – 2 projects, one to illustrate transaction costs for farmers who sell directly to consumers or through a network, and another on costs for restaurants that buy from local farmers Food safety – 2 projects, including on-farm safety audits and food safety training for Iowa farmers who sell to institutions Economic impacts – 3 projects examining the economic impacts of increased fruit and vegetable production as well as shifts to organic crop rotations in Iowa Environmental impacts – 3 projects on fuel use and CO2 emissions for various scales of food systems Distribution and processing – 5 projects developing profitable business models for local food distribution, and training to understand product cost setting ing in small-scale meat processing Access to capital – 2 projects documenting various sources of capital and increasing technical assistance and micro-loans for food entrepreneurs Local food assessment, mapping – 4 projects understanding the demand for various food products as well as the linkages in community-based local food chains Market research – 8 projects ranging from consumer perceptions of local foods, to retailer and consumer interest in local foods and ecolabels

Now the “eat local” movement has its own entry in the on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Sales of “local foods” in the United States are expected to top $5 billion this year, and many trend-watchers say “local” is the “new organic.”

Indeed, interest in local foods has skyrocketed, with the Leopold Center on the leading edge to conduct and support research, fund projects and work with partners who have become important players in Iowa’s emerging local food system.

In 2001, the Leopold Center established Marketing and Food Systems as one of its three research initiatives. To date, the initiative has funded more than 80 grants totaling nearly $1.6 million and leveraged funds for another 50 grants through the Value Chain Partnerships project. However, the Center’s influence began much earlier with support of conferences, workshops, pilot programs, tracking sales of local foods, and opportunities for farmers to sharpen their skills to enter a relatively unfamiliar world of direct market sales to consumers, food service institutions and restaurants.

“The Leopold Center has funded a host of local food efforts throughout Iowa – in Johnson County, Grinnell, northeast Iowa, southeast and southwest Iowa – initially for pilot projects that helped build the case about the value of local foods,” said initiative leader Rich Pirog.

“What’s happened over time is that we’ve gone from pilot projects to where we are now building community support for long-term sustainability of local food efforts. All of these projects need business and local community support to be sustainable over the long term.”

For example, Pirog said Gary Huber from Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) was involved in some of the earliest efforts to link local vegetable growers with institutional food buyers in central Iowa. Now PFI has a Leopold Center grant to set up an Iowa Food Cooperative, expected to be launched in 2008. Other current projects are designed to help farmers work with larger-volume buyers.

“Many of our grants now focus on helping producers meet the increasing demand for local food,” Pirog said. “We’re looking at transaction costs, production and distribution challenges and other technical issues associated with building that local food system.”

With so much activity, naming one or two highlights is difficult. So here’s our Top 10 list of issues that have been addressed through Leopold Center projects. Collectively, they are part of a new frontier and opportunities in Iowa agriculture.