Food Hub
What is a Food Hub?
Food hubs have become a vital part of local food systems. Food hubs connect local farms with institutional buyers (schools, hospitals, restaurants, etc.). The hubs also help market and distribute products for these farms. This helps the farmer focus on farming, and lets the Food Hub do work with distribution, marketing, and managing customers.
Most Food Hubs in Iowa are non-profits. This is what makes our for-profit Hub different. We aren’t publicly funded, so our trucks aren’t as new, our software systems are late to develop, and we work extremely hard all hours to make sure local food is getting to local people. We have made this a mission of our farm to help other local farmers, help our local communities, and help our employees earn a livable wage while changing the way we look at food.
Why does Iowa need Food Hubs?
Food Hubs provide the opportunity for farmers to scale up and/or produce food for larger cafeteria systems. For example, instead of one farm having to produce 600 bunches of radishes for a University, the Food Hub helps aggregate radishes from several local producers to fill the order. It’s crucial for hubs to be a part of this connection. Otherwise, these local institutions would be getting large shipments of food from across the country, or even across the world.
Within our Food Hub structure, we work with the LFPA (Local Food Purchasing Agreement) through the USDA. This program lets us purchase food from underrepresented local producers such as the LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and Veteran farmers and donate that food to pantries all over the state.
What does our Food Hub offer and when?
We offer a variety of the following products from within 30 MILES of Kalona, IA:
Organic Produce
Organic Dairy Products
Organic Eggs
Frozen Meat
DELIVERY SCHEDULE:
Monday- Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, North Liberty, Coralville
Tuesday- Washington, Fairfield
Wednesday- Grinnell, Des Moines, West Des Moines, Ankeny, Ames
Thursday- Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, North Liberty, Coralville
Friday- East to the Quad Cities