Food hubs are linking consumers with their local food producers | Morning Vertical

Food hubs are linking consumers with their local food producers

According to a recent study food hubs are helping the local farmers expanding their businesses. The study shows that more than 300 food hubs are connecting local farmers with their local consumers. According to experts the recent wing of these food hubs are helping local economy in a great way. The food hubs are evolving with the local needs, market resources like- what the farmers are growing in the local areas and the location of the farmers and as well as the consumers. These food hubs are sometimes collecting the food from the local farmers and delivering it to the consumers during the week. On the other hand local restaurant, individual consumers other businesses are also getting linked with the farmers through these hubs. Experts are saying that these hubs are playing an important role in the expansion of the local market efficiently.

In a recent statement Doug O’Brien, Deputy Undersecretary for Rural Development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture said, “We’ve seen in the last few years in particular as local and region food systems have grown and become not only larger but kind of more sophisticated that there has been a need for sort of the logistics of moving food from the field to the consumers. And food hubs kind of fill that space”. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $25 million in recent times for the development of the food hubs and their activities.

According to recent data, food hubs have doubled over the last six years. Most of these food hubs are in the urban areas, where some of them work as non-profit organization, some operate as a producer-consumer cooperative. Some of these hubs have also been working with the CSAs model, where the consumers pay upfront to the farmers for the food all the way through the season. Some of these food hubs are also working as marketing agencies, some of them work as distributors and others work as processing and storage service providers.

Experts are suggesting that these emerging businesses will play a big role in the agriculture industry in future. For them this is the future market place for all local farmers and fresh locally produced food lovers.