Regional Food Solutions


Picture cities and towns lush with green: Fertile farmland, rooftop gardens, delicious food. Consider local farmers making a good living raising crops that are healthy for people and the land. How about children sitting down to wholesome, fresh-cooked meals at school?

This future is now! Families and communities are making it happen because they know they must, and because it’s satisfying and fun.

Patty Cantrell of Regional Food Solutions works with clients and collaborators to support this powerful food and farm evolution. READ MORE

Case studies and tips on small farm financing

July 20, 2012
Case studies and tips on small farm financing

Financing smaller farms: New resources for lenders who want to learn and activists who want to promote.

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Small Farms, Local Food Getting Some Hot New Technology

May 19, 2012
The field of small farm business services is growing for Jane Bush's Apple Schram Organic Orchard in Charlotte and many other diversified operations focused on local markets.

In a sign of changing times, the field of business products and services available to the local food set is now popping with entrepreneurs and innovations. This new business-to-business lineup is helping farms leapfrog over many food market barriers and establish an entirely new playing field.

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Food Innovation District: New Economic Gardening Tool

April 6, 2012
Cherry Blossom Time, Benzie County Michigan, photo by John Clement Howe. http://tiny.cc/bgmccw

Toolkit in process: How communities can make space for local food and farm entrepreneurs to co-locate, collaborate, and grow.

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VIDEO: Michigan farmers turn up the volume

March 7, 2012
VIDEO: Michigan farmers turn up the volume

For small to large farms it’s clear Michigan markets are growing in local food opportunities.

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Alarming step in MI to outlaw heritage pigs

March 7, 2012
Alarming step in MI to outlaw heritage pigs

Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources has declared many heritage breeds that small farmers now sell to high end chefs as “invasive species.” unless that changes these farmers will lose important markets along with animal come April when the “destroy” order comes into effect.

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Lenders learn how to bank on small farms, local food

February 3, 2012
Lenders learn how to bank on small farms, local food

 Financing team offers training as part of healthy food initiative  By Patty Cantrell  Nic Welty employs himself full time year-round raising lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens in three low-cost passive solar greenhouses, which together cover less than one acre of land. His Nine Bean Rows farm near Traverse City, MI, is one of many [...]

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Michigan cities tangle with state’s Right to Farm Act

January 15, 2012
Michigan cities tangle with state’s Right to Farm Act

Michigan cities navigate around state’s Michigan Right to Farm Act to zone for urban agriculture.

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Pure Michigan coming to MI agriculture

January 15, 2012
Pure Michigan coming to MI agriculture

Pure Michigan is one of the strongest destination brands in the world. Now Michigan farmers can use it to connect with shoppers.

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Public health concerns spur produce-market growth

November 4, 2011
Public health concerns spur produce-market growth

Sam Shina’s family owns 14 small grocery stores in Detroit. One of them could soon be part of a market incentive experiment designed to improve public health, expand sales for Michigan farmers, and grow local economies.

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Local demand re-shaping market links from farmer to consumer

November 4, 2011
Van Buren County blueberry grower Pedro Bautista is one of the founders of the new Farmers on the Move cooperative and brand. Photo credit: Patty Cantrell

Consumer demand for new taste, transparency, and trust in their food is in fact spurring a new business model – a food value chain —that some entrepreneurs are embracing.

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