This makes them an intriguing potential market for growers. Yet farmers selling to college food services can face challenges in working with institutional food-buying systems. Many consumers value local, sustainably produced food and are willing to pay a premium for it.
Many producers gain satisfaction from seeing the fruits of their labor so appreciated.
Some producers focus on direct market sales to individuals and others find their operations produce enough for them to pursue larger institutional markets. Doug Johnson, CIAS researcher, set out to identify what opportunities and barriers face producers who would like to market to colleges. Johnson looked at six U.S. colleges, each with significant local, sustainable food buying components. What he found was that while these institutions were trying to increase efficiency and meet budgetary and safety requirements, marketing opportunities do exist for producers of local, sustainably produced food even within the largest and most structured food service departments. Johnson found that, in general, institutional food buyers were more interested in buying locally produced foods which benefited their community than they were in buying certified organic foods.