Kansas Food Hub Working Group

Kansas Rural Center is working to support those who are developing or interested in developing food hubs across Kansas.

Our first discussion will be May 14, 2026 during our monthly Views from the Field. Join us to learn more about Food Hub development in Kansas.

Register for Views From The Field
Register for Views From The Field

While Kansas has many excellent farmers growing food for our communities, numerous challenges face those producers who grow fruits, vegetables, meat, small grains, and other food intended to be sold directly to the consumer or otherwise stay in the local and regional food system. While farmers growing large fields of row crops have traditionally had access to trucking, cooperative grain elevators, crop marketing agencies, and other systems that work with them to sell and move their products, those same aggregation, marketing, and delivery mechanisms are difficult to come by for smaller diversified farmers who seek to collaborate and sell their food locally/regionally.

Central Food Corridor & Cohort

Our new Food Hub Working group builds on the work we have done supporting farmers working on meeting wholesale demand in Central Kansas. In 2022 the Kansas Rural Center (KRC) applied for grant funding from the USDA to work on developing the regional food system in Central Kansas, particularly the counties surrounding I-135 from Wichita through Salina. Our aim was to work with farmers to build a cooperative food hub, ideally one that would be farmer-led and farmer-owned. The food hub would assist the farmers involved with local food aggregation, marketing, and delivery so that the group could serve larger wholesale markets, such as hospital or school cafeterias, that farmers would struggle to fulfill sales to on their own.

The Original Central Kansas Food Corridor Footprint

As KRC has worked with our non-profit partners, producers and retailers of locally grown products to develop a food hub with a centralized building for aggregation and processing, we have shifted our attention away from brick and mortar to building relationships between farmers and creating a network of growers who have the desire to work together and create a network or "cohort" that is farmer-owned and led.

This opens the doors to helpful collaboration that may lead to benefits such as agreeing to carry each other's products in on-farm stores or other storefronts, sharing access to specialized equipment, knowledge sharing, combining orders to fill a refrigerated truck together or scaling up together to use their fulfillment power to open new market opportunities.

If the original intention of having a centralized brick-and-mortar food hub is realized, we feel it will be most successful if the initiative is a farmer-led venture with support from

Kansas Rural Center and like-minded partners. Many of these farmers and partners are recipients of Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) and the Business Builder grants from Heartland Regional Food Business Center. These funds are intended to help scale up farmers' businesses to support local, resilient food systems. The development of a cohort is underway with these farmers as the initial thought leaders, shaping the way. They're joining together to see how these businesses can envision their growth and expansion by working with other like-minded farmers across the Central Kansas region. Currently, the "Central Food Cohort" is meeting via Zoom and has occasional in-person get-togethers with the goal of getting more people lined up to help one another grow and enhance their businesses. As this group of farmers builds their network, they look forward to extending their collaboration beyond central Kansas and even the state.

Frequent Asked Questions:

  • The USDA refers to a regional food hub as "a business or organization that actively manages the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products primarily from local and regional producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail, and institutional demand." A food hub would bring products together from a number of farmers, manage ordering and delivery. This can make it easier for farmers (one delivery rather than many smaller orders) and the purchasers (one order, delivery and one invoice rather than many to manage). There are many Kansas businesses that operate as a food hub in a variety of capacities, but what we are envisioning is something similar to the Kansas City Food Hub in the KC metro area.

  • Participating in afood hub can allow farmers to access new markets. A food hub would have staff support to help market a farm’s products and arrange the transportation logistics to get the products to those markets. Farmers would make a delivery to a hub location, and then the food hub could deliver those products to multiple customers, alongside other farmers’ products. This can allow the farmer more time to spend on the farm, instead of driving to multiple different delivery points. A food hub can also focus on wholesale customers and institutional buyers. Sometimes the production of an individual farm might not be enough for these customers but combined with other farmers products, a food hub can meet the demand.This opens the door for new customers for your farm’s products.

  • Our goal is to establish an organization that would be cooperatively led by farmers. Farmers get to decide where to market their products and set prices. Ideally the food hub is a tool to help farmers access new markets,usually wholesale markets, institutional buyers like schools and hospitals, and other opportunities that might not be manageable for them as an individual producer. The farmers involved can make decisions about what opportunities to pursue and how to avoid competing with their
    existing markets.

  • Due to interest and connections in the area, KRC wrote a grant and was funded to work on creating a food hub in the region encompassing Lincoln, Ottawa, Dickinson, Ellsworth, Saline, Rice, McPherson, Marion, Reno, Harvey, Sedgwick, and Butler counties.

    Within these counties the food hub could be located anywhere that has easy access to farmers and buyers. Food Hubs usually aggregate and distribute over a large distance and could expand beyond these counties.

    Eventually the service area could be larger or smaller depending on the needs of the participating farmers, and what market opportunities are available. There are not any hard and fast rules, and how this service area looks once the hub is operational depends a lot on logistics. One small farm near the region we defined on dirt roads might not work out very well for anyone, but a cluster of farms or buyers outside the area and well connected via highways might be worth the distance covered.

  • Where the food hub physical infrastructure is located is entirely dependent on where best meets the needs of the farmers involved. A single central location located in a town like McPherson could work well, or several smaller aggregation and distribution points located closer to groups of farmers who are involved may be best.

Interested in Selling Through the Food Hub?

Please fill out our Farmer Information Form so we can learn more about what you’re interested in selling.

Funding for "Building the Central Kansas Food Corridor: Creating a Food Hub and Delivery Network to Serve Communities Along Interstate 135 in Kansas and Increase Food Access" was made possible by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service through grant AM22LFPPKS1095-00. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.