The wholesale end of local food is a growing business sector that walks a fine line between profitability and social change, according to a new study from the Wallace Center, home of the National Good Food Network.
As a pioneering organic farmer, an academic at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and president of New York’s Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Fred Kirschenmann is both a practical and intellectual leader in the Good Food movement. In the second of our two-part q-and-a, Kirschenmann discusses obstacles to change in our industrial food system as entrenched interests try to hold their grounds, and why he is hopeful that the rise of “food citizens” will bring change nonetheless.
Food hubs, which provide aggregating, marketing and distribution services to regional food producers, are growing in numbers and influence, according to a survey report released Sept. 19, but still face a number of challenges.