In this episode of our local program Making Democracy Work, host Dr. Hueping Chin speaks with Katie Nixon, food assistance director of New Growth.
New Growth Just received an over $2 million grant to enhance your work with local farmers in rural areas. But first, can you tell us about New Growth and its mission?
Nixon: So, New Growth is a community development corporation that focuses on rural prosperity. We help small businesses with their business needs, and we also look at areas where we can be helpful in creating better systems change within rural communities. And one of the areas of focus is our food systems program, which is really looking at the food system as a whole, how we can create better healthy food access and small farmer sustainability.
And this is in the Missouri, south Missouri area?
Nixon: Actually, we have a pretty big footprint through our Heartland Food Business Coalition, which we will talk about in a little bit, but we work in five states through that coalition to connect practitioners that are helping small farmers connect to the right resources at the right time. And then New Growth really does focus strongly on west central Missouri. We also have a women's business center that does have a couple of counties that we serve in Kansas. And then through our micro lending and credit building program, we actually serve the entire state of Missouri. But then our transit program is mostly focused on the south central or excuse me, west central portion of Missouri, providing free rides to people.
So, you mentioned about the food systems. You are the director. And congratulations on the huge grant. This is a grant that you received from the Pattersen Family Foundation. Can you tell us more about that?
Nixon: In a moment of need, we actually had funding from the USDA for the Heartland Regional Food Business Center, and that funding was prematurely canceled two years early due to a decision by this administration, so we were short the funds we had intended to use to help food and farm businesses. And so, we reached out to Patterson Family Foundation who believed strongly in a strong local food system and helping rural communities thrive. They invited us to submit a proposal, and so we did, and they did fund us for that. And the project is really about providing technical assistance, basically one on one business support, to our farm and food businesses. And that could be people just growing food for people or it could be value added businesses that, you know, maybe take a product and make a salsa or even just, you know, minimally processed foods or even a rural grocery store or somebody who's aggregating like a farm stop or a farmer's market, trying to help people get access to local food. And part of that grant is actually, we have $1 million dollars to regrant out, to food and farm businesses that are enhancing their community's food system and want to grow their business.
So, you mentioned about food hubs. Can you tell us more about that?
Nixon: I am the co-founder and president of the Kansas City Food Hub, and we work very closely with that cooperative of farmers that sell into the Kansas City region. So, this particular food hub is made up of about 40 farmers that all collectively pool their availability into a marketplace. And that is where our buyers go and work with 45 school districts from Topeka to Columbia. Many of them are in Kansas City, and so, we are able to get healthy, local, fresh food into the bellies of kiddos across the region. And food hubs do this all over the country. This is just one example, and we're trying to help other food hubs through this grant and another grant in in the Kansas region and then also in the I-70 corridor across to Saint Louis to try to bolster the food hub activity.
And then you mentioned about, you know, you were going to use $1 million to help the local farmers, and who are qualified to apply for this grant?
Nixon: The grant is called Harvest to Market Grant, and businesses can apply for between $5,000 and $25,000. There's no matching requirement, but your business has to be physically located in the Patterson Family Foundation catchment. So, if you go to the Patterson Family Foundation website, you will see their catchment, which is all rural counties across Kansas and several in Missouri on the west side of the state. So, it's not super comprehensive across the state of Missouri, but there are definitely big pockets where we're hoping to affect the success of these food and farm businesses that apply to this grant. And we're looking for businesses, not production focused, but postproduction focused, on growing their business. Maybe they need a piece of equipment to help them scale. Maybe they need a new website and marketing, you know, online sales platform or something like that. And so, we're looking to help them really with whatever items that they need to be successful.
So, in order to apply for this grant, they need to get on the Patterson Family Foundation website or they get to your website?
Nixon: They can look at the eligibility from our website, too. We are currently solidifying all of the application details. We're looking to release the instructions and open the application period in June. They can go to the newgrowthmo.org or the heartlandfoodbusiness.org website to find out more information.