Our Projects

SNAP Fund for the Iowa Food Coop

Want to make a tax exempt donation to our SNAP users fund? Donations to the SNAP fund allow us to support the Iowa Food Coop by waiving membership and consumer fees for SNAP users.

SNAP (EBT) Fund
 
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Community Education & Personal Connections

Our current food system is built on convenience and competitive pricing. For the full value of local foods on our health, economy, communities and environment to be more well known and for new healthy behaviors to be adopted we must create personal connections & convenient pathways for people to source and consume local foods.

Awareness and education are important pieces of growing our local food system, as it not only creates more income for producers, but also builds a community of food citizens more deeply invested in supporting infrastructure and policies which benefit small scale, local producers.

We host events, workshops, and table events in order to spread the word about why supporting local producers is so important.

Do you have an idea for a partnership? Send us an email!

Convenient Pathways to Source Local Foods

Online Shopping Cart Software

Find all the details here.

One way we are working to improve markets that are efficient and profitable for producers is through online, year round sales of local food. We have developed an online shopping cart platform called Shop. Eat. Local. which is currently being piloted at the Iowa Food Cooperative. The platform offers a unique way to access locally produced goods from a wide range of local  producers on a bi-weekly basis. For producers, it offers a simple and efficient market and for members, all their products are brought to one location for a convenient all in one pick up or home/satellite site delivery. We are working to test and tweak this software so that it can soon be offered as a free software option for other local food markets.

Access to local food

We are working to ensure the shopping cart platform will offer an efficient way for online local food markets to accept SNAP EBT and Double Up Food Bucks Dollars. And, we are working to spread the word about the variety of ways community members can access local food.

We are also creating tutorials and tailored supports for producers with a variety of backgrounds and languages to be able to sell through an online market.

Let’s grow more local food connections in our community.

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