Addressing Food Insecurity and Creating Economic Opportunities through the Southwest Regional Food Business Center: White Mountain Economic Development Works to Grow a Network of Food Entrepreneurs and Farmer’s Markets in Northern Arizona

The Issue

Northern Arizona is a largely rural and tribal region with high rates of food insecurity and poverty. Children are particularly impacted with over 40 percent of children suffering food insecurity in rural northern counties such as Apache County. Many counties in Northern Arizona are considered food deserts with most small towns lacking full-service grocery stores. At the same time, local food producers frequently lack local outlets where they can sell their products. As a result, food producers and consumers have expressed increasing interest in farmer’s markets to address issues of food access and economic opportunity. 

Southwest Regional Food Business Center (SWRFBC) partner White Mountain Economic Development (WMED), a technical assistance provider in Northern Arizona, has been responding to the needs of local food entrepreneurs through the creation of the Northern Arizona Food Alliance. The aim of the Alliance is to build a vibrant network of new food entrepreneurs and farmer’s markets across northern Arizona that can improve both local food access and economic development. WMED provides research, networking, technical expertise, and outreach to grow this vision. With the support of the SWRFBC, WMED is helping to both expand the number of vendors at the existing Winslow Farmer’s Market as well as laying the groundwork for the creation of a new farmer’s market. 

What has been done? 

The Winslow Farmer’s Market located in northern Arizona serves as an incubator for new food businesses as well as a model for other farmer’s markets. The market has about 200 vendors, with roughly 30-40 vendors and 1,000 visitors attending the market each week. About 50 percent of vendors come from local tribes, particularly Hopi and Navajo. Consumers note that the farmer’s market is a welcome alternative to a dearth of food options in the region, particularly due to widespread perceptions that the farmer’s market provides higher quality and better-tasting produce and food options compared to foods sold at big box or dollar stores. 

As a partner with the SWRFBC, WMED has assisted in further growing the Winslow Farmer’s Market. WMED conducted seminars and roundtables for food entrepreneurs to learn marketing strategies and tips on how to effectively work a booth. WMED then coordinated to bring in the Navajo County Health Department to discuss cottage licensing and food labeling. 

WMED has also partnered with the Small Business Development Center to evaluate the economic viability and possible venues for the creation of additional farmer’s markets in Northern Arizona. They identified the Navajo County Fairgrounds in the small town of Holbrook, just 32 miles east of Winslow as the ideal place for a new market that could operate year-round given its 8,000 square-foot exhibit hall and infrastructure to host food trucks and coffee trailers just outside the hall. WMED’s survey of Winslow Farmer’s Market vendors found that a third of current vendors would be interested in participating in the new Holbrook market. 

With the collaboration of the Navajo County Fairgrounds non-profit management team, WMED has submitted a proposal and financial model for a new farmer’s market in Holbrook. WMED anticipates that the fairground’s governing board will likely approve the proposal, and a Holbrook Farmer’s Market will soon become a new point of sales for local producers and an important option for local consumers looking for a year-round source of locally grown produce and farm-fresh proteins. 

The Impact

The Winslow Farmer’s Market is serving as the model and business incubator for new opportunities that can be multiplied across northern Arizona through the Northern Arizona Food Alliance. Support from the SWRFBC is helping to grow the Alliance into an interconnected network of commissary kitchens, farmer’s markets, and training and technical assistance that can provide new economic opportunities and fresh food access across five counties in northern Arizona with large rural and Native populations, including Apache, Navajo, Coconino, Yavapai, and Mojave counties. With the successful collaboration of SWRFBC partner WMED, the Winslow Farmer’s Market, and the Northern Arizona Food Alliance, the City of Winslow commissioned a feasibility study for a business incubator that will provide startup and expansion services to the food and other entrepreneurs. The program will coordinate with other commissary kitchens and farmer’s markets across the region to further expand vending opportunities for the food entrepreneurs. This study showed strong demand for a commissary kitchen and co-op retail space. As a result, the city has submitted an EDA planning grant to transform an empty city owned 30,000 sq ft building into a business incubator. The Arizona State EDA Director has accepted the application and has indicated he will support its full funding. As WMED technical assistance provider Russ Yelton describes, “the work we’re doing with the entrepreneurs is to create the ability for those entrepreneurs to sell throughout the region…Through the Northern Arizona Food Alliance [we are] connecting the farmer’s markets with the shared kitchens, with the entrepreneurs, with the local people, with the tourists, with the travel folks…So there’s an entire network that we’re looking to create and have function that will create revenues that will be there hopefully for a long time.”