As we have been talking about for some time, KSCGA has been actively working on building and organizing our database of Kansas growers, markets, and industry rep’s since our early organizational days. With a solid database of over 300 Kansas growers, markets, and related partners, we now have the next phase—an online grower-driven directory and networking platform—in its trial and demonstration phase. Watch for more demonstrations and full roll-out Fall 2023.
With grant support from USDA/KDA Specialty Crop Block Grant program and Kansas Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Alternative Crops—and the contributions of our KSCGA members—we’ve been working with WaterGrass, a nonprofit data management platform developer, to build a functional and efficient data management platform from which we can focus our communication and outreach, keep track of membership, provide reports on who’s growing what and where and how our Kansas growers are marketing and selling, and much more. From that, we, with continued work by WaterGrass, have been moving to the next stage—extending our database into a user-friendly online directory and networking platform in which growers can search and connect with other growers and markets to share information and ideas, access and develop production and market opportunities, find product—and find sales and distribution venues for your product, and much more. As simple as that may sound, the extent and complexity of our many data fields has presented challenges in getting this up-and-running. We can, though, now report that the system is in its final pre-rollout phase, with early demonstrations getting a very favorable response from growers, markets, and related partners across the state.
During the recent KS Dept of Agriculture KS Ag Summit—Specialty Crop Session, held online Aug 22, and other regional venues, we’ve had the opportunity to demonstrate the capacity and functionality of the directory system. In those, growers, markets, and other partners saw how they will be able to conduct focused searches for such things as:
who’s growing peaches in Johnson and Douglas Counties—to build their diversity and supply at their on-site markets
who’s growing tomatoes and selling them wholesale—giving them the opportunity to sell surplus to a larger grower who can get more product into a wholesale distribution system
who’s growing mushrooms—so they can reach out directly and get information and advice on how its done
and much more.
As we move ahead, we’ll be adding fields such as cultivation practices (organic, high tunnel, etc.). and more from suggestions from our grower members.
The full KS Ag Growth Specialty Crop Session is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L5rRq4qzn0; with our organizational update, and the portion on the directory/networking system, beginning at at the 44:45 mark. There’s a lot of good information through the entire session—with KSCGA also contributing in a grower panel on scaling up, with good representation by both small and large growers, starting at the 17:50 mark.
The directory/networking platform will be available to all for a trial period—after which current dues-paying members will have access to the search and outreach functions. We’ll be working out the details on that in the time ahead.
Watch for more updates on the roll-out and input opportunities in the days and weeks ahead—on our Facebook Group page and here on our website.
And please—we need the full support of all of you to keep this work going strong in the year ahead—and beyond. Make sure to join as a contributing member or renew your KSCGA membership at: https://www.kscga.org/membership. Thanks to the generous support from some of our more established growers, a limited number of subsidized memberships are available.