Commercial Market Readiness Education for Kentucky Farmers and Southeastern States

This project addresses the market development risks small farms and ranchers must manage as they seek to develop supplier relationships with restaurants, grocery, and wholesale buyers. Significant opportunity exists to build on the demand for local products in local markets. Many farmers, however, are tentative or unprepared to meet the transactional requirements required by these buyers to manage food safety, insurance, product quality, and traceability risks. A commercial readiness training program has been developed that can help equip growers to more successfully engage these markets. The training is based around best business practices identified by buyers that are actively seeking to engage local suppliers. A pilot grower training program will be delivered in Kentucky with additional train-the-trainer programs provided to the seven other MarketMaker network states in the South. The training in Kentucky will establish impact tracking protocols that can be used across the network.