Washington, D.C. – The Federal Reserve Board in August hosted a conference and published a book titled “Harvesting Opportunity: The Power of Regional Food System Investments to Transform Communities.” The book and conference were the culmination of a two-year partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Federal Reserve.
The inspiration that led to focusing on this topic began through events that were held across the state of Missouri by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to encourage economic investment in local food-related businesses.
“We heard local small farmers and food entrepreneurs talk about how much of a challenge it was to actually finance their work, which led us to begin thinking about how does this happen? How do you find the capital? Find the credit access to pay for food entrepreneurship?” said Daniel Davis, a community development officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “And that initiated this partnership that we have with the United States Department of Agriculture and with the Federal Reserve Board.”
Regional food systems encompass a variety of different industries locally, including production, distribution, marketing, processing, and retailing of food. Mary Hendrickson, an assistant professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri, Columbia, was a panelist at the conference. “Not every region has the same kind of foods, and you really build out the differentiations that connect people to their place through food,” Hendrickson explained.
A recent trend toward eating locally sourced food is benefiting this sector of the economy. Malini Moraghan a principal at DAISA enterprises spoke on this topic. “Consumers now preference transparency and traceability, and they’re also multi-channel shoppers,” Moraghan said. “What we’ve also seen are major shifts in market share where you have small and mid-sized companies gaining share at the expense of the larger brands.”
Regional food enterprises often get their start as small businesses. The “Harvesting Opportunity” publication that accompanied this conference was created to highlight the resources required for entrepreneurship in the agriculture and food-related industries
Kate Danaher, senior director at RSF Social Finance, moderated a panel discussion on investing in regional food systems. “Small businesses have a tremendous amount of needs–not only in access to capital but technical assistance and preparing management for understanding their financials and how to grow and be operationally self-sufficient,” Danaher said. “In the traditional financing sector, the risks that are identified are usually known risks. Regional food system space is different, the risks aren’t known to us. There is a tremendous amount of different types of capital required.”
There is more information about this conference on the Federal Reserve’s website, and the “Harvesting Opportunity” publication can be downloaded from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ website.
Video producing, editing, voice over, and writing by Amanda Mosher