Guest Authors: Dr. Hikaru Peterson & Dr. Kathryn Draeger, University of Minnesota
Calling all garlic growers in the great state of Minnesota!
We need your help with the Backhaul Project at the University of Minnesota.
What? Trucks drive around rural Minnesota, spending 50% of their time empty. The University of Minnesota is working with farmers, buyers and distributors, and rural grocery store owners to find a way to fill those empty trucks with local produce.
How? The idea of the Backhaul Project is to leverage existing networks. Farmers will bring their products to their rural grocery store. The products are loaded onto the trucks returning to the warehouse from the rural grocery delivery route. The product will then be shipped out to the region through the distributor’s normal distribution channels.
Why? The Backhaul Project hopes to expand the market distribution of Minnesota garlic and other produce through “backhauling” from rural grocery stores, so that it can be profitable for farmers like you and amplify the availability of local produce in Minnesota grocery stores.
We’re piloting the project with garlic with plans to explore the feasibility with other produce. So, you wonderful garlic growers! Would you be willing to help spur this project forward? Please click on this link to take our survey: http://z.umn.edu/Backhaul_MNGrown
The survey will ask about your operation and current marketing practices. When we aggregate your responses, it will give us an idea of the scope of the opportunity for the MN garlic sector, which we can then match with the available distribution networks. For more information on the Backhaul Project, please see: https://www.extension.umn.edu/rsdp/statewide/rural-grocery-stores/
Thank you for your time! If you have any questions about the survey, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Hikaru Peterson at hhp@umn.edu or (612) 625-7728.