Thanks to a generous Thriving Rural Grant from the Patterson Family Foundation, Vision Caldwell and Shop Kansas Farms partnered together to launch the Border Queen Harvest Hub. The Harvest Hub is a community-based approach that creates economic opportunities for farms and ranches by using a digital hub to connect a physical system of production, processing and distribution of local food that can be purchased by local, regional and national consumers. The vision of Shop Kansas Farms is to help communities across the state start their own Harvest Hub.
“We have been talking with Shop Kansas Farms for a year after Karen Sturm invited them to talk to us,” says Jill Kuehny, CEO of KanOkla and president of Vision Caldwell. “Shop Kansas Farms has a model to create economic prosperity in rural communities by tapping into the entrepreneurial spirit of existing farmers, ranchers and growers to provide them with new revenue streams and to energize entrepreneurs who want to begin farming with a new, less costly and smaller scale point of entry.”
Shop Kansas Farms began in April of 2020 as the pandemic interrupted the global food system evidenced by empty meat counters at grocery stores. What began as a Facebook group to connect people to the farm and ranch families of Kansas so they could purchase the food they grow, exploded overnight as consumers discovered local farms and ranches had the food they needed. As it continued to grow, a website with a searchable map was added as more consumers wanted to buy locally.
“Our Facebook group now has 166,700 consumers looking to buy local,” says Rick McNary, founder of Shop Kansas Farms. “If you go there or to our website at shopkansasfarms.com, you will see it is a digital hub that connects producers, processors and distributors to a state-wide food system. The Border Queen Harvest Hub will narrow that into an even more defined, regional area. Consumers want to know where their food comes from and are often willing to pay more, but for that direct-to-consumer transaction to be successful, there needs to be a practical, physical regional supply chain of those three components.”
When this Harvest Hub is established, consumers will be able to look on a map and identify the supply chain of farms where their local food is being produced, the commercial kitchens and lockers where the food is processed and how and where those items can be purchased. The Border Queen Harvest Hub brand on products, signs and merchandise will create community pride and assurance they are buying locally.
“We’re going to call it the ‘BQ-double H,’” Kuehny says. “Just like the cattle brands of our storied history of cattle drives on the Chisolm Trail, we will be ‘riding with the brand’ of BQ-Double H.”
There are two parallel tracks the Border Queen Harvest Hub is built on: community engagement and economic development.
Although Vision Caldwell is the convening organization behind this, their vision of BQ-Double H is much broader than just the town of Caldwell. There will be Town Halls, Charcuterie Nights, Market of Farms and other engagement strategies that create a sense of community support and pride in creating a hub that connects everyone.
The first BQHH Town Hall was held in Caldwell on Feb. 21, but drew interested businesses from Medicine Lodge, Belle Plaine, Oxford, Wellington, as well as Oklahoma businesses from Enid, Tonkawa and Medford. In addition, a report was given about the support of the Sumner County Commission to fund a part time data entry person who will populate another key to the digital hub, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform, Salesforce.
Town Halls serve in an important element in creating the engagement of everyone in the surrounding community. Food has long been a common denominator that unifies people as is evidenced by church dinners, potlucks, barbecues and tailgating. Building upon the idea of food connecting a community, it is important to understand this is more than just an organization connecting a few isolated parts, rather, it is a hub that connects everyone in the region through the production, processing and distribution of food.
The Harvest Hub will work with all stakeholders in the community to create a common agenda, shared measurements, mutually reinforcing activities and continuous communication. A website is coming soon along with additional digital and print communications.
The other track this is built on is economic development: BQ-Double H will expand small businesses with new revenue streams and support entrepreneurs with new opportunities in these three areas:
• Producers: Identify and support current and future producers in the region to create new revenue streams, gain access to capital, find new markets, write business plans, provide sales and marketing support, build customer relationship management systems, develop communications strategies and be more easily found by consumers.
• Processing: Identify and support local meat processors and commercial kitchens in existence, or, in the absence of those necessary elements, establish that missing link in the local supply chain.
• Distribution: Provide support to producers with the distribution of their products by helping them learn how to ship, hosting an annual Market of Farms, making connections to local grocery stores and finding markets where various producers can take their products and consumers can shop there.
The first BQHH Market of Farms, held in Caldwell on Saturday, March 9, was a glowing success. Consumers as far away as Kansas City came to purchase food products from vendors as far away as Seneca. The Market of Farms brings vendors and consumers from all over the state together to make local foods available for purchase. This event was the rollout of the Border Queen Harvest Hub (BQHH) new website, www.borderqueenharvesthub.com. For more information on how to start a Harvest Hub in your community, reach out to me: rick@shopkansasfarms.com
Rick McNary is a leader in bringing people together to build community and reduce hunger in sustainable ways.
