The Missing Middle
This term refers to the gap in midstream infrastructure, such as local storage, regional processing, and small-scale distribution that connects small farms to local buyers.
What is the missing middle?
Name one Illinois farm.
Any Illinois farm! Funks Grove Heritage Fruit and Grains, Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery, Sola Gratia, Chicago Patchwork Farms, etc.
This Chicago-based, Illinois nonprofit joined us on our field trip.
What is the Illinois Food Justice Alliance?
Jeff facilitates IFSIC. What does IFSIC stand for?
Name one thing that can happen to food after it leaves the farm but before it reaches your plate.
Aggregation, storage, processing, transportation, distribution, marketing, packaging, etc.
The USDA funded, farm-to-food assistance program that Makala worked on for 2+ years.
What is IL-EATS (or LFPA)?
Funk's Grove Heritage Fruit & Grains grows grain on this many acres.
What are 4 acres?
The name of Illinois' state food system infrastructure grant program.
What is the Local Food Infrastructure Grant?
What is a food hub?
This type of organization aggregates, stores, processes, distributes, and markets locally produced food.
Name one challenge that can make it difficult for schools to buy from local farms.
Kitchen equipment, staff knowledge/capacity, funding, administrative buy-in, cold storage limitations, meeting National School Lunch Program nutrition requirements, connecting with farmers, etc.
To enter Janie's Mill's production facility, all visitors must follow GMPs such as wearing close-toed shoes. What does GMP stand for?
What are Good Manufacturing Practices?
This initiative helps producers find infrastructure, identifies investment gaps, and connects local leaders with existing assets.
What is the Illinois Asset Mapping Initiative?
What is food access?
This term describes having reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.
These are the three components of Farm to School.
What is procurement, school gardens, and education?
Unlike standard all-purpose flour, Janie's Mill stone-milled flour includes these two parts of the wheat kernel in addition to the endosperm.
What are the bran and germ?
Why does Funk's Grove spell sirup with an "i"?
Sirup refers to boiled sap rather than a sugar-and-liquid mixture known as "syrup".
A tomato is harvested on a farm and later served in a school cafeteria. Name three types of infrastructure it could pass through before it reaches the student's plate.