May 01, 2024
By Rick McNary
The Border Queen Harvest Hub (BQHH) Town Hall held in Oxford this month was well attended as farmers, ranchers, public officials and community members gathered to learn about the Harvest Hub, a community-based approach to create economic opportunities for farms and ranches by establishing a physical system of production, processing and distribution of local food that can be purchased by local, regional and national consumers.
“Connecting growers with a way to solve their hardest problem, which is marketing their product to a bigger and wider world, is what the hub will do,” says Jill Kuehny, CEO of KanOkla, who also represents Vision Caldwell, the driving force behind BQHH. “It is a breakthrough that will bring prosperity to our rural areas and local producers. It was exciting to see the crowd at Oxford take this in and really embrace what it will do in our region.”
Rick McNary and Kylee Stout of Shop Kansas Farms, the organization whose model is being implemented with the BQHH, explained the origin of the Harvest Hub, how a generous $300,000 grant from the Patterson Family Foundation has provided resources to build a website and hire an executive director. In addition, they have had the financial support and the endorsement of the Sumner County commissioners and are working in tandem with Stacy Davis, Sumner County Economic Development director.
“It has been exciting to watch our small farm families grow their business operations through direct-to-consumer sales that the Border Queen Harvest Hub will offer a platform for,” says Stout, business development manager for Kansas Farm Bureau. “More and more consumers in the Border Queen region will soon fall in love with buying directly from farmers, and it is really a cool thing to be a part of.”
Stout encouraged local farms, ranchers and growers to list their farms, for free, on the new Border Queen Harvest Hub website, and gave them instructions on how to advertise on the BQHH Facebook group. There is also a bi-monthly BQHH newsletter, which serves as one of the many communication platforms used to disseminate information.
“I was impressed by the quality of people and the power of building out the Border Queen Harvest Hub,” says Dr. Stephen Smith of Kansas City, a BQHH advisor who drove to Oxford for the event. “The energy in the room was outstanding. The plans for the upcoming Farms Tours (11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 29) will introduce many people to what is percolating in Oxford’s neck of the Border Queen Harvest Hub. Kansas needs more of these types of meetings to grow out individual, community, county and state economies.”
These BQHH Town Halls are part of the strategy to engage the community in creating awareness and engagement as the Harvest Hub builds out a practical, physical local food system that involves all three components of production, processing and distribution.
“It was great to see a group of people networking about maintaining critical food sources within small communities,” says Shayla Wheeler of Flying Toad Farms. “The direct food supply chain seems so simple but quite important our growing food deserts.”
At one point, McNary held up a refrigerator magnet that had the BQHH logo and website on it and explained the importance of that brand.
“This brand will be the visual element that ties all the practical components of the Harvest Hub together,” McNary said. “In time, this logo will be on the food produced in this area and people will be able to drive around the area and see this logo attached to the farms and ranches who are producing the food. In addition, this logo will be on the meat processors and commercial kitchens and canneries so people can practically see how their food is grown and processed and that they are buying local.”
“It was good to connect with other local producers during the Border Queen Harvest Hub Town Hall meeting,” says Sarah Werner of Werner Creek Farm near Winfield. “We are always looking for ways to promote other local farmers and their products in addition to our own. We are excited to see local food systems become a focus for Kansas Farm Bureau through Shop Kansas Farms.”
To schedule a BQHH Town Hall in your city, please contact Rick McNary at Rick@shopkansasfarms.com or call him at 316-734-6845.