Food Hubs are businesses that actively manage the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products to multiple buyers from multiple producers. Producers served are primarily local and regional. Hubs exist to help these producers satisfy local and regional wholesale, retail, and institutional demand.

Food hubs are divided into three categories:

  • Retail or farm-to-consumer
  • Wholesale or farm-to business/institution (includes distribution)
  • Hybrid (both retail and wholesale)

Healthy Harvest of North Iowa is a part of a statewide Food Hub network which works to move local food around the state to increase sales opportunities for producers. If you have questions please reach out to andrea@healthyharvestni.com

Here are some resources to provide more background on wholesale and food hubs:

Iowa Food Hub Directory 

A Snapshot of Local Food Hub Activity in Iowa from 2012

Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS)

The National Good Food Network’s Food Hub Center.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture has a “Growers Manual: A Template for Grower Cooperatives“. This resources also has a lot of great information about Post Harvest Handling for a variety of crops. Another Food Hub related resource from the Leopold Center is: Production Planning for Aggregators.

Practical Farmers of Iowa‘s “Scaling Up” looks into wholesale marketing.

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach‘s Food Hub Managers Working Group,  Food Hubs 101 webinar, and Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative’s Food Hub Financial Management Boot Camp.

Tips on Selling Wholesale Presentation
Selling wholesale can be intimidating. We (Healthy Harvest of North Iowa) have partnered with the Cedar Valley Regional Food and Farm Network with the local food hub Field to Family, to share top recommendations for your business as you enter the wholesale market. This is an excellent preparation step before attending events such as our our producer-buyer networking event. Please enjoy the recording of this session.