K-State Local Food Fellow’s Summer with Cultivate KC

This year, as part of a Regional Food Systems Partnership program grant from the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, Kansas State Research and Extension launched a Local Food Fellowship program to strengthen local food systems across Kansas. Cultivate KC hosted one of the program’s Local Food Fellows this summer, Sophia Ong from Kansas State University, who spent the summer collecting data on produce prices at Farmers Markets in the KC metro area.  Perhaps you saw her sporting a green Cultivate KC shirt with a clipboard in hand, as each week she connected with the vendors to explain the project and collect prices of produce, meat, eggs, and honey. Through this eight-week project, Sophia visited each farmer’s market four times, once every two weeks. The reports from Sophia’s data collection have now been published, providing price data from June and July. These reports, on a cumulative scale, list items of produce noted with their low price, high price, and average price across nineteen markets in the city.  

The purpose of this project is to provide a comprehensive report and put it in one place to aid farmers as they price their items each week. Whether it be seeing other prices at the markets they sell at, or focusing on how produce is changing each week as items move in or out of season, this can hopefully be that aid to each vendor to see where their produce falls and give a sense of the market around them. Through her collection of prices and discussion among vendors, she has found prices vary due to many factors. Size and location of market, as well as where each item falls in its season have presented a wide variety in prices in each market. 

Sophia is a rising junior at Kansas State University, majoring in Dietetics and Economics. She plans to pursue a public health career and has a big passion for engaging with the local food system. Most of her education runs on the side of food after it has been purchased, exploring how individuals choose to prepare and consume their food in relation to their health. She is newer to what precedes that, being agriculture, and through her summer with Cultivate KC, has had the amazing experience of connecting with farmers and becoming acquainted with the processes that bring food from farms to people.  

What she has gained from this project has gone beyond any spreadsheet report on prices, but more so has given her an insight of the entire system that comes before food is purchased, prepared, and eaten at the consumer level. Among many other things, she has learned about the work of farmers both on their land and in their service to the community at markets each week, especially vendors who sell multiple markets each week. Relating to her project, she has more specifically learned the different price philosophies among market managers, how prices change with more sellers entering the market, and about different farming strategies and their role in the output of goods. Overall, seeing the importance of quality produce that is supplied in this system of farmers within the KC markets has been an enriching and impactful experience. She hopes this project can serve as a tool to help farmers in this diverse metropolitan area. 

Check out her June and July Price reports here:

KC Farmers Market June Pricing

KC Farmers Market July Pricing

Written by Sophia Ong, K-State Local Food Fellow