Food services is a huge market. The next phase is to take it statewide. This is one of five institutional-buying projects that we're trying to learn and help them expand. Farm Bureau is looking for more local suppliers, and PFI is helping them. PFI is working with farmers to attend the Farm Bureau facility for meetings to learn about products and amounts needed, uniformity of size, delivery and time requirements.
Farmers have to work through a distributor.
A real question a lot of growers have is if they can sell at a profit. We want to create a collaboration where both sides will make a profit. Farmers have to move farther up the food chain to get closer to the buyer, he states. The bottom line of making it work is that the Farm Bureau wants to pay the fair value to the farmers who are producing the food. One day a week during the growing season, Farm Bureau offers an all-Iowa meal to people in their cafeteria.