North Valley Food Hub for Climate-Smart Agriculture

The North Valley Food Hub for Climate-Smart Agriculture is now being launched with funds received in December 2022 by the USDA Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program via a $5 million grant over five years. The intention of this project is to provide farm-to-fork integration through marketing and sales support for climate-smart commodities (such as almonds, walnuts, rice, tomatoes, peaches, and prunes) by consolidating transaction costs, creating a one-stop shopping platform for buyers, and a marketplace for growers to post and promote their products. The project plans to support producers in implementing a variety of climate-smart cover crops; no-till or minimum-till practices; nutrient management; enhanced efficiency fertilizers; planting for high carbon sequestration rates; and soil amendments. An incentive payment is planned to be offered for each producer implementing an advanced practice. Partners include Butte County Farm Bureau; North State Hulling Cooperative, Douglass Ranch; GRUB Farms; Chico State Organic Vegetable Project, and Chico State’s Basic Needs Hungry Wildcat Pantry.

Specific project goals include:

• Establishing the North Valley Food Hub for Climate-Smart Agriculture focused on training, education and marketing services for small and underserved farmers and ranchers engaging in climate-smart production practices. This will include technical service provider training, online farmer education and networking tools, and on-farm field days.

• Incentivizing underrepresented growers to use climate-smart production practices and participate in the Hub marketing and distribution through technical support, educational programming, and economic incentives.

• Establishing monitoring systems for each cooperator farm/farmer to track soil carbon accrual through regular and standardized soil carbon assessment. Soil Carbon is how carbon drawdown from the atmosphere and sequestration in the soil is determined.

• Developing markets/sales for producers participating in the North Valley Food Hub for Climate-Smart Agriculture through climate-smart product marketing language and strategy.

Stay tuned to this space to learn more once we're up and running.

Learn more about the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities program(opens in new window).