Consumers have many choices in today’s marketplace. Whether they are shopping in the your farm market, roadside stand, community farmers’ market or the local grocery store it makes no difference…busy shoppers can choose to buy fresh fruits and vegetables or any number of frozen or otherwise preprocessed (value added) foods. FoodLink, a FREE tool developed[Read More…]
Marketing
Recently the USDA announced the addition of a new third-party auditing service that will be available through the Ag Marketing Service (AMS). The service, called “GroupGAP”, will be available in the spring of 2016. The expansion of the service follows multi-year piloting and testing of the program. Under the GroupGAP program, independent farms may organize[Read More…]
If you grow kale you may be interested in the ‘You Heart Kale’ effort promoted by Indiana’s Farm to School program for this year’s Food Day. The “Kale Toolkit” provided by the Indiana Dept. of Education encourages schools to buy kale from local farmers, plant kale in the school garden, let students taste-test kale recipes,[Read More…]
The Indiana State Department of Agriculture’s (ISDA) Indiana Grown Program is an all-inclusive collaborative initiative to promote Indiana produced agricultural products to Indiana residents, restaurants, grocery stores, farmer’s markets, wholesalers, processors and other retail businesses. In addition, through the Indiana Grown program, the ISDA is establishing a marketing strategy to promote Indiana agriculture nationally as well[Read More…]
The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) at USDA publishes information about prices, supplies, movement, and quality of vegetables every business day. On Thursday, July 16, 2015, 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, AMS will offer a webinar about the Fruit & Vegetable Market News, what information on organic crops is available, and how to use the[Read More…]
The Indiana State Department of Agriculture is officially launching the Indiana Grown Initiative on July 7, 2015. This free marketing program will enable all Indiana agricultural and food products to be labeled and marketed with an Indiana brand. It is a very comprehensive program that will include many market channels and farm products. This program[Read More…]
In March 2015 the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture appointed Dr. Petrus Langenhoven as Horticulture and Hydroponics Crop Specialist. During the past 18 years Dr. Petrus Langenhoven has dedicated his career to the development of the horticulture sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. His career started off at the Agricultural Research Council in Stellenbosch, South Africa.[Read More…]
Purdue Extension is starting the Indiana Food Hub Network this year. So what’s a food hub? The USDA working definition is “a centrally located facility with a business management structure facilitating the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products.” Extension educator Roy Ballard, who is workkng with Local Food Coordinator Jodee[Read More…]