Supply Chain Coordinaton
The Iowa Food Hub Managers Working Group connects the dots between producers and consumers across the state-wide local food supply chain. In order to grow sales for local producers and increase access to local food in institutions like schools, hospitals, etc; the RFSI will invest not only in infrastructure like cold storage, processing, and trucking but also in the hub-to-hub network. Strengthening partnerships between wholesale food hubs, Local Food Marketplace and Kitchen Sync Strategies will create the right software solutions and solve logistics to improve collaboration and increase capacity for the middle of the local food supply chain in Iowa.
Iowa Valley RC&D, Iowa State University, the Food Hub Managers Working Group and its partners’ supply chain coordination efforts will include:
Develop and integrate new supply chain coordination tactics into Iowa's hub to hub network to increase collaborative distribution and aggregation efforts with new software and SOPs.
Host a Middle of the Supply Chain Buyer and Supplier Summit to build relationships between local food buyers and producers and to share innovative improvements to Iowa’s food system infrastructure.
Hire and train a supply chain coordinator and sales representative along with Kitchen Sync Strategies to build new markets and sales for Iowa’s food hub network and producers.
Supply Chain Coordination Partners
Partners envision these RFSI efforts will lead to:
Improved warehousing and cold storage so that food hubs can maintain high quality products and increase the volume of local and regional food that is purchased and distributed.
Establishment of new aggregation nodes, equipped with cold storage , which farmers could access as drop-sites and which could be used for cross-docking to move products between partner food hubs and reach more underserved areas of the state.
Upgrades to trucking and distribution infrastructure to replace unreliable vehicles that are costing the hub to hub network time and money.
New software tools to increase collaboration between partners in the hub to hub network to improve collaborative inventory management, sales and ordering from farmers to increase the hub to hub network’s capacity