Mar 05, 2024
By Rick McNary
Businesspeople from Medicine Lodge, Caldwell, Wellington, Belle Plaine, and Oxford in Kansas as well as Medford, Enid and Tonkawa attended the Inaugural Border Queen Harvest Hub at Sugar Sisters in Caldwell on Wednesday, February 21. Thanks to a generous Thriving Rural Grant from the Patterson Family Foundation, Vision Caldwell and Shop Kansas Farms are partnering together to launch the Border Queen Harvest Hub.
In addition, Stacy Davis, Sumner County Economic Development Director. Rick McNary, founder of Shop Kansas Farms and Meagan Cramer, Director of marketing and communications for Kansas Farm Bureau, helped facilitate the meeting along with Jill Kuehny.
The evening was spent explaining, and answering questions, about the Border Queen Harvest Hub which is a community-based approach to create economic opportunities for farms and ranches by using a digital hub to connect as well as establishing a physical system of production, processing and distribution of local food that can be purchased by local, regional and national consumers.
In addition to explaining the benefits to both producers and consumers, a report was given about a website being built that will serve as a digital hub connecting consumers to producers and processors in the region so they can purchase food directly from Kansas and Oklahoma farms. That website, www.borderqueenharvesthub.com, will launch on March 1. In addition, a report was given about the support of the Sumner County Commission to fund a part time data entry person who will populate another key to the digital hub, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform, Salesforce.
Soon, an Executive Director will be hired and more BQHH Town Halls will be scheduled monthly in the region. If your community would like to host a Town Hall, please reach out to Rick McNary: rick@shopkansasfarms.com
You can follow the latest news on the Border Queen Harvest Hub Facebook group and, after March 1, the new website.