Kitchen Table Advisors
Kitchen Table Advisors (KTA) fuels the economic viability of sustainable small farms and ranches through practical business advising and trusted relationships. They support food producers who use regenerative agricultural practices, and are leaders for social and environmental change within the food system. KTA supports Northern California producers to reach new milestones, from hiring their first employees to buying property and beyond. They prioritize work with communities that have historically been excluded from resources and recognition within our food system — namely the BIPOC, womxn, low-income, immigrant, and LGBTQ communities.
Foodmuse has been a fan and supporter of their work for several years and jumped at the opportunity to partner with their team on investigative research project. KTA approached us after recognizing a need to expand beyond their core advising program to invest in rebuilding the marketplace around land, markets and capital. They sought to provide a new path forward in market access that is grounded in research funded by a USDA Local Food Promotion Program Planning grant and guided by an opportunity to increase small farmers’ access to larger buyer partners and their supply chains. What this looked like in practice is extensive collaboration with both nonprofit and procurement partners to identify matchmaking opportunities, grow sales relationships, adapt buying processes and create new supply chains.
KTA’s first step was to enlist the help of food systems specialist, Heather Frambach, who spent months conducting interviews with both farmers and buyers within the Bay Area and surrounding agricultural regions. Using these inputs and borrowing from her professionally-honed procurement expertise, Heather drafted an Executive Summary from which Foodmuse distilled all information into an interactive map, seen below.
This map is the culmination of eight months of targeted research focused on value-chain coordination, otherwise known as market access, which is part of KTA’s broader body of work around Ecosystem Building. Ecosystem Building stems from the recognition that, in addition to individual support of farmers and ranchers, we need to shape the institutions that control land, markets and capital as a means of achieving their vision for the food system. Take a moment with this map to learn a bit more about the value chain that connects farmer and rancher producers to you, and consider ways that you can support through your workplace, network or your own kitchen table.
We couldn’t have completed this project without the help of the incredibly talented Evan Sornstein of Æther Bureau. Photography credit to Nicola Parisi & the KTA Team.
