New Research Exposes Hurdles for Small-Scale Food Producers
Although small-scale and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) food producers are more likely to meet measures that buyers say that they seek, there are market forces that keep them sidelined, according to a new paper published by Illinois Tech researchers.
“Minding the Implementation Gap,” from Illinois Tech student Gaudy Solorzano Morera (Ph.D. MSC Student), Interim Stuart School of Business Dean Elizabeth Durango-Cohen, and Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability Weslynne Ashton, was published in Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. The paper outlines a combination of rules and procurement procedures that institutional food buyers, such as schools or hospitals, implement, and how those procedures turn away product from smaller food producers.
“A food purchase is conventionally judged by its immediate price, volume, and compliance requirements. But institutions also want their spending to support healthier communities, stronger regional food systems, sustainability, and equitable opportunities for producers,” Ashton says. “Our study found that many smaller producers engage in the practices these programs seek to encourage, yet face barriers involving volume, certification, and cost. We wanted to understand how to close this gap so purchasing decisions could account for both the practical demands and, especially, the broader values these decisions create.”
The researchers surveyed 189 Midwestern food producers and interviewed institutional buyers and food-service professionals, which included producers, distributors, and farmers, as well as buyers such as representatives of the City of Chicago and Cook County, a hospital, and food service management companies.
Overall, the interviews revealed that despite small-scale and ethnic-minority producers being more likely to grow culturally relevant crops and using sustainable practices that buyers prefer, they are still locked out of institutional markets.
“What surprised us most was the mismatch between who practices the values and who can satisfy the purchasing rules,” Ashton says. “A producer can be an excellent match for the purpose of values-based procurement and still be a poor match for its current process. For us, that is the implementation gap in one sentence.”
The paper shows that institutional food buyers tend to purchase from large-scale producers because of cost considerations. Small producers also have difficulty meeting the volume requirements of institutional buyers, as well as the costly and complicated certifications that institutional buyers like to see.
Using the gathered information, the researchers see opportunities for institutional food buyers to include small-scale producers, but it will take work from buyers, producers, and legislators.
The paper recommends that producers strengthen cooperatives so that they can pool resources and meet volume demands, as well as expand training in institutional standards and scale. They also recommend institutions alter how bids are scored to reward sustainability methods and culturally sensitive crops and to sign seasonal or flexible contracts with suppliers. Policymakers can help by subsidizing certification costs, creating a tiered certification system for small-scale producers, and building a database of small-scale producers for institutional buyers.
“Our interviews reveal the crucial distinction that interest does not necessarily translate into purchasing power,” Ashton says. “Buyers may want values-aligned food and still lack a workable route to purchase it, as they follow market rules that favor the lowest overall bid and tight procurement budgets that limit their flexibility to purchase local specialized items.”
