Rural communities seeking to build food hubs and public market facilities face significant challenges and obstacles, such as limited access to resources and a lack of expertise in facility planning and design. However, stakeholders have the opportunity to collaborate –to organize, pool their strengths, and collectively overcome these barriers.
Warehouses4Good, a national, non-profit developer of food storage, processing, and distribution facilities, delivers that opportunity by helping local partners plan, design, fund, construct, and operate rural food hubs and public markets.
Our approach is simple. For each facility, we assemble a highly qualified team of architects, engineers, logistics professionals, general contractors, and other specialists who work with our local partners to build facilities meeting their needs. Fostering collaboration is central to our model; we ensure that everyone is working together toward a common goal. Once built, the day-to-day operations become the responsibility of these local stakeholders.
The benefits of collaboration are a recurring theme among recipients of USDA local food promotion grants:
“Collaboration with others doing similar work proved to be a big help and gave us the opportunity to build good and lasting relationships.”
– Appalachian Sustainable Development, “Increasing the Viability of Farmers Markets and Farmers in Appalachian VA and TN through Coordinated Marketing, Promotion and Analysis
“One of the most positive elements we discovered through this project is the need for strong partnerships to accomplish the work. Further, we found that with work targeting low-income/low-access households, utilizing partners outside of the food system was … beneficial …”
– The Land Connection Foundation, “Champaign Farmers Market: Expanding Access to Local Foods through Promotion and Training”
“Great Work is Never Done in a Silo. Having the depth of partnership that SVHC has been fortunate to secure has allowed for increased movement across sectors resulting in a continuous stream of requests for SVHC leadership presence and invitations to join in educational and programmatic opportunities.”
– Seven Valleys Health Coalition Project, “Promoting, Sustaining, and Expanding the Local Food Impact in Cortland County