By Yiqian Ma
The PIE Center’s newest training toolkit will help farmers get their fair share of Florida’s annual $8.3 billion in local food sales.
The toolkit, called “Selling local food: Your market next door,” summarizes the results of the PIE Center’s research focused on local food in Florida and packages the results and recommendations in an applicable and easy-to-understand format that producers and farmers can apply to their own business.
Nicole Dodds, outreach and training coordinator, was responsible for designing and creating the toolkit, and said this was the first tool designed specifically for producers.
“In the early stages of development, I worked directly with the researchers to create an outline that represents their key research findings and also meets the needs of our stakeholders,” she said. “When producers use the tool, they can absorb our research in a way that is meaningful to them.”
Researchers found that consumers’ definition of local food was broader and more flexible than previously thought, said Joy Rumble, who led the focus group research for the PIE Center. She is an assistant professor in the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication.
“The flexibility in consumers’ definition of local food provides many opportunities for farmers and producers,” Rumble said. “It also makes it interesting and intriguing to research.”
The PIE Center carried out the research in partnership with the Florida Specialty Crop Foundation and the UF/IFAS Food and Resource Economics Department and was funded by a specialty crop block grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Sciences.
Dodds said the toolkit helps small- to medium-scale producers answer three key questions: What are consumer perceptions of local food? What local foods do consumers buy? And how can producers sell more local foods?
The toolkit has interactive components, which Dodds said arouses users’ interest and initiative to learn. For example, the toolkit contains case studies, scenario-based questions and engaging animations
As users progress through the course, Dodds said they will track their progress by collecting local fruits and vegetables. Users answer “knowledge checks” to earn and collect shopping bags and coupons to use during the “check out” at the end of the tool.
The key research-based recommendations relayed in the tool are aimed at helping producers sell more local food. A few of the opportunities presented for producers include understanding consumer perceptions of local food and purchasing behaviors, developing relationships with consumers, nurturing a friendly purchasing environment, listening to consumer preferences and using different marketing strategies.
“We hope that producers will be able to implement some strategies or identify opportunities presented in the tool to take the marketing of their local products to the next level,” Rumble added.
While the toolkit is primarily aimed at small- and medium-scale producers, Dodds hopes that Extension agents will use the toolkit in their programming for these groups.
The local food research and toolkit will be featured in a four-page insert in the November issue of the Florida Grower.
I had your toolkit as a link on our website. However, it is no longer working. Do you have a link that we can connect to? Please click on marketing & education tools on our hompe page and scroll to the bottom.
Thanks,
Hi Lesia, thanks for including our toolkit on your site! A lot of the links changed around when we redesigned our site a month or two ago. Here is the new link: https://www.piecenter.com/localfood/