September 3, 2025 — Ensuring access to healthy food in communities takes not just one market, but an entire network of access points. From grocery and corner stores to farmers markets, restaurants, food banks, and institutions like schools and hospitals, different markets serve different members of the community and have different needs in terms of the type, volume, packaging, and timing of food needed. Meeting this diverse demand with local or regional products – a practice with proven benefits for human wellbeing, regional economies, and the environment – adds additional complexity.
Matching Farmers to Markets
What market is best for farmers? The answer is different for each farm and depends on factors like farm size, products, staffing, marketing capacity, and business goals. A diversity of stable markets is just as important for a farmer’s bottom-line as it is for the health of the local community, but – for the farmer – the tradeoffs are real. Wholesale opportunities are high volume but have a lower price point and often end up directing food out of the community. On the other end of the spectrum, farmers markets usually offer the best price point for farmers while providing community connection and keep food in the community, but they are labor intensive for sellers, move smaller volumes of food, and have limited hours that only provide a small window of food access to customers. From the farmer’s perspective, the tradeoffs need to be carefully considered. This is where value chain coordination (VCC) and value chain professionals (VCCPs) can help!
What is Value Chain Coordination?
VCC is the development of relational infrastructure, networks and information sharing channels, that create thriving and sustainable regional food economies. VCC plays a critical role in developing local and regional markets by connecting farmers with opportunities that align with their operational goals. VCCPs work along value chains to help farmers, businesses and buyers connect. VCCPs can be an individual, organization (e.g., food hub, co-op, etc.), institutional buyer (e.g., school district staff, university procurement officer, etc.), or government agency. Many people working as a VCCP wear many other hats in addition to their VCC activities.
VCCPs build relationships across the entire value chain—getting to know farmers, aggregators, and buyers—to ensure that the needs and values of all stakeholders are represented and supported. VCCPs help farmers understand their marketing opportunities and help them select the right market for their business. When local farmers can’t fully meet community needs, VCCPs help farmers and buyers come up with novel solutions like securing investments to extend the growing season (e.g., purchasing high tunnels for farmers, etc.), working out better pricing or volume agreements, combining products from multiple farms, or helping buyers change how they plan menus and place orders.
To support the field of VCC and grow this capacity across the country, the Wallace Center developed a VCC curriculum and makes it available online and through cohorts. As we continue to seek ways to help build business relationships that strengthen regional economies, nurture the environment, and honor the dignity of everyone involved, we’re looking for new ways to apply VCC.
Growing VCC by Strengthening Food Hubs
One way to grow VCC capacity is by supporting food hubs, which support aggregation, distribution and marketing of local and regional foods. Food hub staff often play the roles of VCCPs in their communities and have a wealth of relationships to build on. Food hubs are a core piece of local and regional food systems infrastructure that can help connect markets and scale up local food systems.
Recently, the Wallace Center submitted an LFPP proposal to support food hubs in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma to refine their financial and business plans, set a path for intentional growth, use their role as a value chain coordinator to connect institutional markets, and optimize their operations. In conversations leading up to this proposal, we found many food hubs have changed their customer bases over the past five years as they adapted to market volatility, and have not landed on their ideal mix of customers. We hope this project will help food hub operators step back and identify their ideal mix and then offer support to work towards that vision.
What market potential do you see for local foods in your community? What partnerships do you think would best move things forward? Let us know what you think! Reach out to Andrew.Carberry@winrock.org with your thoughts or questions.