May 2025

Value-Added - Join us next week!

Berry Sweet Business

June 5, 2025 | 5:00 – 7:30 PM | 1 4-H Way, Little Rock

Join us for a deliciously fun evening of turning Arkansas-grown strawberries into Arkansas-made jam—and discover how to turn your home preservation hobby into a small business!

Hosted by the UA Division of Agriculture’s Local Food and Preservation Team and local farmer and food artisan Margie Raimondo of Urbana Farmstead, this hands-on workshop is perfect for backyard gardeners, foodies, and aspiring entrepreneurs eager to explore home-based food production.

What’s on the menu:

An overview of the Arkansas Food Freedom Act
Key food safety practices for home processors
A live strawberry jelly-making demo with Margie Raimondo of Urbana Farmstead
Taste fresh samples—and take home your own jelly!

Whether you want to reduce food waste, stock your pantry, or start selling at your local market, this workshop will give you the knowledge and confidence to get started.

Ingredients are sourced from the Arkansas Farm Trail (AFT), a program of Arkansas Farm Bureau created to promote direct-to-consumer farms and help Arkansans learn where their food comes from.

Start your journey on the trail at ARFarmTrail.com

👉 To register, visit:

uada.formstack.com/forms/preserving_arkansas

📩 Questions? Contact Amanda at: aperez@uada.edu

Local Foods

Strengthening Arkansas’ Local Food System: A Growing Movement

As part of a USDA Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) grant, our team is proud to support the growth of the state's local food economy. Our mission is to provide technical support After the Harvest for food safety, infrastructure, and regulations that impact sourcing or selling Arkansas-grown food, and to help applicants seeking infrastructure or equipment grants navigate the process with confidence.

At the heart of this effort is a statewide needs assessment, an exploration into how Arkansas is innovating across its local food supply chains. We’re listening to producers, distributors, processors, and retailers to understand their challenges and opportunities. One area of particular interest is a new and exciting model emerging in communities across the country and beginning to take hold in Arkansas: the farm stop.

In Arkansas, a quiet transformation is taking root, one that brings local food closer to home and strengthens the ties between local food producers and communities through an emerging Farm Stop model for food and business innovation.

What Is a Farm Stop?

A farm stop is a hybrid retail model that combines the structure of a year-round farmers market with the convenience of a grocery store. Farmers and local producers consign their products, ranging from fresh produce and meat to dairy, baked goods, and value-added items, to a centralized store. Staff employed by the farm stop handle sales, marketing, and customer service, allowing farmers to spend more time on production while still receiving the majority of the retail price.

Unlike traditional grocery stores, farm stops focus almost exclusively on locally grown and produced goods. They are not food co-ops or farmers markets in the traditional sense, but rather a new kind of food retail outlet, often open daily or several days a week, supporting dozens of local producers, and building deeper community connections around food. To help offset the risks that come with sourcing only local, many are using mixed business models including other types of products, regionally grown produce, or other non-food services or products.

Margie Raimondo in her farm stop Urbana Farmstead in Little Rock, AR.

Driveway Farm Stops: A Hyper-Local Twist on a Growing Movement

As the farm stop model spreads across the country, Arkansas is seeing an exciting and highly localized variation emerge, driveway farm stops. These micro-scale outlets are being established by garden-scale producers right in their own neighborhoods, often operating out of driveways, front yards, roadside stands, or converted garages.

What is a Driveway Farm Stop?

A driveway farm stop is a small, self-serve or staffed retail space where backyard growers and small producers offer fresh, homegrown produce and handmade goods directly to their community. While limited in scale, these setups mimic the core principles of a traditional farm stop:

Local sourcing: All products are grown or made by the host or a small group of nearby producers.
Direct-to-consumer: Sales go straight from grower to customer, often using simple honor systems, QR codes for payment, or small point-of-sale apps.
Year-round or seasonal access: Some operate seasonally during peak harvest times; others stay open year-round, adapting inventory based on what’s available.
Community connection: These spaces often act as neighborhood gathering points and informal educational opportunities about gardening, food, and sustainability.

Why This Model Matters

Driveway farm stops are a form of food system innovation driven by necessity and creativity. They offer:

Low-barrier market access for very small-scale producers, especially those just starting out or growing food as a side enterprise.
Flexible infrastructure that doesn’t require large capital investment, formal retail space, or complex logistics.
Hyper-local food access, reducing food miles to mere blocks and building trust between neighbors.

Some driveway farm stops evolve into more formal operations or become part of a network of producers experimenting with cooperative models, shared branding, or pop-up events. Think of this model as similar to the Food Truck to Restaurant business start-up.

A Sign of What's to Come

This micro-scale model reflects a broader shift toward responding to food systems and supply chain access challenges, bringing food retail back into neighborhoods and empowering more people to become food producers, even at a small scale. It's not just a trend; it's a grassroots response to a growing demand for local, fresh, and community-sourced food.

As part of our work in the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program, we’re keeping a close eye on these emerging models to understand how infrastructure, permitting, and grant funding can support them, ensuring Arkansas continues to lead in creative, community-rooted food solutions.

Are you operating a farm stop or do you know someone in community that is using this innovative business model? We would love to have a conversation. Please sign up for follow-up call here:

Farm Stop Interest Form

New Support for Local Food Infrastructure Projects

We’re excited to share that Sarah Bakker has stepped into a new role as the Local Food Program Lead to support Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) grant awardees and stakeholders across the state! In this role, Sarah will be offering technical assistance for cooler installation and overall project implementation. She is also developing statewide programming and resources to support post-harvest infrastructure needs like packing houses, cold storage, transportation, and market access.

If you're working on getting your harvested products to consumers or just have questions about best practices, reach out! Whether it’s hands-on assistance or connecting you with the right resources, we’re here to help.

You can reach Sarah at sbakker@uada.edu

The Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) supports the development, coordination, and expansion of direct producer-to-consumer marketing; local and regional food markets and enterprises; and value-added agricultural products.

The primary goals of LAMP are to:

Connect and cultivate regional food economies through public-private partnerships.
Support the development of business plans, feasibility studies, and strategies for value-added agricultural production and local and regional food system infrastructure.
Strengthen capacity and regional food system development through community collaboration and expansion of mid-tier value chains.
Improve income and economic opportunities for producers and food businesses through job creation; and
Simplify the application processes and the reporting processes for the program.

LAMP is an umbrella program created in the 2018 Farm Bill. LAMP encompasses the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP), Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP), Regional Food System Partnerships Program (RFSP), and Value-Added Producer Grants Program (VAPG). LAMP funding is divided between these grant programs.

If you plan to apply, please read the proposal and match requirements to ensure you are eligible to apply and can meet the financial and reporting expectations.

LAMP Funding Opportunities

Farmers Market Promotion Program
Local Food Promotion Program
Regional Food System Partnerships Program
Value-Added Producer Grants (administered by Rural Development’s Rural Business-Cooperative Service)

Produce Safety

Thank You for a Great International Compost Awareness Week!

A big thank you to everyone who joined us for our International Compost Awareness Week activities and webinars! We had a great turnout and loved hearing your compost-related questions and stories. It was inspiring to learn more about the creative ways folks across the state are raising awareness about the benefits of composting and issues of food waste. We can't wait to keep this compost momentum going, so keep turning those piles!

Thank you to St. Joseph's Center for hosting a compost event at their Thursday night market, and we are looking forward to snagging some fantastic compost from the UALR Campus Garden compost bin soon! 😉 🌱

Share Your Input on Postharvest Water Use

Our national produce safety partners are collecting information from farms and facilities that use water to wash produce after harvest. If that’s you, please take a few minutes to complete our short, confidential survey. Your feedback helps produce safety educators across the country understand current practices and improve outreach and resources.

📝 Survey takes less than 10 minutes!

📄 See the flyer below for details.

Value-Added

Visiting the New Market Center of the Ozarks

Dr. Perez and Sarah Bakker had the opportunity to attend the grand opening of the Market Center of the Ozarks in Springdale—a new 45,000-square-foot facility dedicated to supporting local farmers and food entrepreneurs. The center offers cold storage, commercial kitchens, crop aggregation, and technical assistance, all under one roof. It’s an exciting addition to the Northwest Arkansas Food Systems initiative, and our team is excited to see how it strengthens local food infrastructure across the region. 🥕📦🍴

For those interested in learning more, check out AFIC at Market Center of Ozark.

Upcoming Events

Center for Arkansas Farms and Food Open House – June 5

Come visit the Center for Arkansas Farms and Food (CAFF) Farm in Fayetteville on Wednesday, June 5 from 5:00–7:00 PM for their annual Open House! This is a great chance to tour the farm, meet the CAFF team, and learn more about their training programs. The guided tour will begin at 5:30 PM—don’t miss it!

Pollinator Field Day at Rattles Garden – June 22

Join us at Rattles Garden in Vilonia on Saturday, June 22 from 3:00–6:00 PM for a field day focused on supporting pollinators on organic farms. Farmer Tara Stainton has been growing organic vegetables and cut flowers for over 15 years and selling at the Hillcrest Farmers Market in Little Rock. During this event, she’ll share how she creates and maintains habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects on her farm.

📍 Rattles Garden – 1780 US-64, Vilonia, AR 72173

Come learn, explore, and celebrate pollinators in action!