The role of values in food hub sourcing and distributing practices.

摘要

There has been rapid growth of interest in planning and operationalizing food hub enterprises across the country. These entities aggregate food products primarily from local and regional producers. They may have a variety of additional social goals. These enterprises may have the ability to help scale-up local and regional food systems by providing an entry point into stable, institutional and retail markets. This thesis focuses on values employed by food hub operators in their sourcing and distributing practices. Using a qualitative approach, we interviewed representatives from eleven Midwest food hubs to investigate their conceptions of values-based products, strategies used to source products and their intersection with underserved consumers. We find that most operators view flexible sourcing preferences as a prerequisite to a viable business in terms of geographic region, farm size and product attributes (e.g. production methods). We also find that serving underserved markets is a secondary priority, often taking place through partnership with other community organizations and through acceptance of EBT at farmer's market or donations to food banks. We did not find any explicit intention of developing business plans to service underserved consumers in the future.