Frog Song Organics in Hawthorne will pilot a new “food hub” model to get more local produce into schools, prisons and community centers, Alachua County announced this week.
The farm has a budget of $375,000 and ten months for the project, the latest phase of a multi-year study to determine what a regional food hub could look like in Alachua County.
Elsewhere in the state and across the country, food hubs act as collection and distribution centers for local produce. They vary from small, on-farm storage facilities to giant warehouses and often include commercial kitchens, educational spaces or consumer storefronts. In North Central Florida, the hub aims to connect small and medium farmers to big, institutional buyers they couldn’t normally reach…