What's at stake?
The goal is to educate consumers, restaurants, and institutions about the bounty of local produce, and help smaller-scale local farmers, who often lack big marketing budgets, to reach potential customers close to home.
With the “farm to table” movement – a vague-but-trendy catchall stressing the most local, most seasonal ingredients – having been in full swing across the country for the better part of a decade now, sometimes it’s hard not to feel like the Central Valley has lagged behind. If not in production, at least in promotion.
A new branding initiative, Central to the Valley, hopes to change all that. At a launch event in Ivanhoe east of Visalia on March 10, the folks behind Central to the Valley brought together small farmers, academics, and some local politicians to celebrate the new marketing push.
“Despite the diversity and abundance of produce grown here in the Central Valley, there’s never been a unifying brand to promote it,” said Helle Petersen, Regional Director of F3 Local, the nonprofit driving the new effort. “This new ‘Central to the Valley’ campaign creates that opportunity.”
The goal is to educate consumers, restaurants, and institutions about the bounty of local produce, and help smaller-scale local farmers, who often lack big marketing budgets, to reach potential customers close to home.
The Central to the Valley campaign is the brainchild of F3 Local (“Food, Farms, Future”), a non-profit launched in 2022 by a U.S. Economic Development Administration grant. Their mission statement stresses helping the Central Valley ag industry and farmers “to be competitive, resilient, and sustainable.”
At the modest event, staged at the picturesque Seven Sycamores Ranch, a south valley wedding venue, local farmers and speakers from the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), F3, and University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources, among other local groups, discussed the importance of “building value around food grown in the Central Valley,” and increasing access to locally grown food.
In practice, F3’s promoters say, that might look like buyer’s guides for consumers, restaurants, and institutions looking to source local food, and providing marketing resources for local producers.
“At our scale, marketing has always been a challenge for us,” said Vicky Garcia-Moya, representing Eco-Family Farms, a women-owned almond farm in Chowchilla. After having worked in sales and management, Garcia-Moya planted 29 acres of almonds on her family’s property in 2010.
To that end, CAFF offered pricing guides for organic farmers, and a marketing toolkit.
While their database is still rapidly expanding, consumers can already use Central to the Valley’s buyer’s guide to find everything from farm-to-table restaurants, u-pick produce, and other specific categories of local offerings produced anywhere from Mariposa to Tulare.
Editor’s note: The F3 initiative is a sponsor of Fresnoland. Funders, donors, members, and sponsors have no influence over our editorial decision-making.
