July 25, 2024 • 25 mins
In this episode, we explore the transformative power of Empower Missouri's recent grant for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative Partnership Program. With the legislative session wrapped up and the heat of summer settling in, this unexpected funding brings a refreshing wave of possibilities for improving food access across the state.
Join us as we dive into the significance of healthy food financing, a concept that's been evolving for over two decades. Learn how Pennsylvania's pioneering efforts in 2004 set the stage for Missouri's ambitious plans to address food deserts and low-access areas, both urban and rural.
Our guest, Trina Ragain, shares insights on the strategic partnerships with University of Missouri Extension, IFF, and Missouri Coalition for the Environment. Discover innovative solutions like mobile markets, school-based grocery stores, and regional food hubs that aim to restore food access in underserved communities.
Get inspired by the collaborative spirit and creative thinking driving this initiative forward. Whether you're interested in community engagement, healthcare, or regional food systems, this episode offers a comprehensive look at the future of food access in Missouri.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:59):
Have happened. Legislative session is over. So you survived the rest of the
rest of that. And it's hot out.
Those are the two changes from February. That's it. That's all that's happened.
You're caught up now. Yeah. And then of course, Empower Missouri received this
$1 million healthy food financing initiative partnership program grant sometime in, I believe, April.
(01:22):
So that happened. We can add that as a third thing. That is a third thing that
happened. It felt less expected than being hot now.
I think it was. I mean, it was a national request for proposals.
And it's my understanding there were 55 proposals submitted across the country.
16 were funded. And so we submitted the application wanting to be able to have
(01:47):
this grant and funding to work on healthy food financing in Missouri.
But I think we all thought it was a long shot, that it would be pretty competitive.
So it was a delightful surprise as we were getting towards the last few weeks
of legislative session.
Maybe put us a little bit in the overwhelmed category while trying to wrap that up.
(02:09):
But now that we've all had some time for breathing room, fully entered into
the excited, excited mode of dealing with this.
I think when Mallory told me that we received that funding, the two of us just
laughed for like three and a half straight minutes, just like as it hit us and
washed over our holes, all of our senses, right?
(02:32):
Yeah. This is great. And also, what are we going to do now? Yeah.
I mean, it's great. We have a million dollars and three years to do capacity
building with an array of partners in Missouri to hopefully get us to a point
where we have, at the end of that three years,
a funded or fundable statewide healthy food financing initiative.
(02:56):
That's amazing. Trina, explain what healthy food financing is and means. Yeah.
So it's a concept that's about 20 years in the making.
Pennsylvania led the PAC starting in 2004 by creating the Pennsylvania Fresh
Food Financing Initiative.
And what that is, is essentially it creates by state statute...
(03:21):
It's essentially like a framework by which the state can invest dollars,
grant dollars and loan dollars, into helping to establish healthy food access
in areas that currently lack that access.
Typically, those areas are going to be urban, so city areas that are what we
(03:43):
used to refer referred to as food deserts, or now referred to as low-income,
low-access areas, and rural areas.
There has been a trend over the past 20 years that those mom-and-pop grocery
stores in rural areas of America and rural areas of Missouri,
there's no one to take those over when folks want to retire.
(04:08):
And there's not a lot of profit to be made in grocery.
If you read the industry Street Publications, which I sometimes dabble in,
you will see that... Sounds fascinating.
What great reading. Right? They're making one to three percent off groceries.
It's all about volume. And that's not something you have when you're talking
about our more rural areas of the U.S.
(04:31):
So you've slowly seen this kind of dying breed of mom and pop grocery stores,
which have created these huge areas that lack access and really can't support
a traditional grocery store model anymore.
So people are maybe driving 20 miles to get to the closest Walmart,
(04:51):
but, or, you know, they have to buy their food at a dollar store, which, you know.
There's dollar generals on every corner, and there are a million publications
about why that's problematic in a policy.
Right. I remember reading one, and I believe the title was like dollar stores are killing America.
And it was about the fact that with those being in many rural or urbanized areas,
(05:15):
the only place where people could buy food, they don't do perishable food.
So we're not talking about having access to any fresh fruits and vegetables.
It was typically like processed, shelf-stable foods that a good percentage of
Americans were coming to rely on as the primary source of their groceries.
(05:38):
So healthy food financing essentially creates grants and loans to support the
pre-development, development,
and building of what they refer to as food retail projects.
So those are things like your brick and mortar stores, but maybe it's a a nonprofit grocery store.
(06:01):
Maybe it's a co-op. Maybe it's a slightly different model from what we think
of when we think of a traditional grocery store because we know that the profitability isn't there.
Or it's a food enterprise project. And so food enterprise is anything along the food.
Distribution value chain. So one of the big problems with getting,
(06:24):
even if you want to start a grocery store in rural America, in rural Missouri,
how do you get suppliers out there?
Because is it worth someone's time and energy if you have a small grocery store
that only needs to be stocked every couple of weeks?
Does it make sense to send a truck out there to resupply that store.
(06:47):
And so there's, you know, issues along the entire supply chain that need to
be addressed. Yeah, it's really interesting.
I always think like Missouri is special. It's probably not special,
but there's a lot of parts of Missouri that even in the cities and even close
to an interstate, you're hours away from, right?
(07:08):
I mean, you hear about it takes like a super long time to drive Texas, right?
And there's parts of Missouri where leaving in Kansas City, I might be six hours
from being able to get to a rural area within Missouri.
I did not really think about how that would impact things like,
you know, big trucks getting into those areas and the little tiny highways that,
(07:29):
I don't know things about trucks. Can you drive big trucks on little tiny?
I mean, I know there's like capacity issues on the roads.
While I might dabble in industry publications related to grocery, I'm sure not.
I haven't made my way into the trucking industry yet. Well, maybe someday.
But, you know, I mean, everything is based on profitability.
(07:51):
And so you have to, in the way we currently structure groceries,
you know, it's built on, we're a capitalist country, right? Really? Yeah.
This just in. Uh-huh. Brand new information right from the podcast.
Everything, in case you missed it, everything is based on a business model.
(08:12):
All of our problems boil down to the pursuit of money over everything else.
So someone isn't going to deliver supplies to your grocery store out of the
goodness of their heart and take a loss on gas and mileage and paying someone
to do it, right? Right. And so we have to think outside the box.
And that is what I love about healthy food financing initiatives is when you
(08:35):
look across the country, you see people coming up with some really ingenious
ideas of how we reestablish food access in areas that have lost it.
I mean, you see something like a mobile market, right? We have several of those
here in Missouri, where someone takes a bus or some other sort of truck and
essentially creates a grocery store, a little mini grocery store on wheels.
(09:00):
Yeah, we just gave an award to your friends there at Operation Food Search for their mobile grocery.
It has a name, whatever it is. The St. Louis Metro Market. It's amazing.
There you go. Shout out to my friend, Quentin Ward, who runs that.
But it's great because they are able to take that truck or that bus and establish routes, right?
(09:21):
So you know then if you live in an area Every Tuesday, for example,
the Metro Market is in my neighborhood from this time to this time.
And I can go there and I can get my groceries, including fresh fruits and vegetables.
And bonus, I can use my SNAP benefits there.
And so that's also a really important piece of healthy food financing initiatives
(09:41):
is that we know these are often low-income areas in addition to being low access.
And so part of the national strategy is to make sure that we're establishing
venues that allow folks to utilize things like their SNAP and WIC benefits.
Yeah. And so, you know, maybe it's a mobile market. Maybe it's a brick and mortar.
(10:04):
There are examples across the country of like schools starting grocery stores.
Oh, that's super smart. Yeah.
I mean, the most rural access that I have is my oldest brother lives in a very
tiny town outside of Kansas City, and all of the school's age kids are in one building together.
It would make so much sense to have resources right there in that place for that community.
(10:27):
When you talk about rural areas, or even some urban areas, school districts
can be like anchor institutions, right?
And so it's something that a lot of people will be coming into contact with.
And so there are examples where it's like, yes, we're going to open a grocery store because,
The ability of our families to have access to groceries impacts children's ability
(10:48):
to learn. Well-established, right?
And so there's a vested interest in making sure that families have access.
It is also a training ground, right? If it's on a school campus,
what a great way you can incorporate that into your curricula.
I mean, teaching kids how to make business plans, maybe preparing them for management roles.
(11:11):
Maybe it's a first job that you work there.
But I think there's a lot of potential there, and it's great to see those types of models come up.
Another model that I have heard of is small municipalities, rural municipalities,
starting grocery stores.
So a village of, you know, a certain name here, starting a grocery store and
(11:35):
really thinking of it or looking at it almost like a utility.
Just like the residents of that municipality need access to water and electricity.
They need access to groceries.
So I love seeing that sort of innovation. That's a great plan.
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
And I think there's also a place in this, and this is near and dear to my heart,
(11:57):
how do we incorporate the regional food economy, right?
And by that, I mean, we're in like an agrarian state.
Missouri, I believe our biggest export is actually agriculture.
I might be wrong, but I think I read that on the Missouri Department of Agriculture
website. They would know.
(12:18):
They're the kind of experts we want to quote as potentially that's where we got it.
We may have gotten that bit. I like to just collect little bits of information.
I don't know what kind of trivia night it's going to be that I will succeed in. Yeah.
Because this is not, these questions never come up when I go to like a fundraising trivia night.
(12:39):
Now I want to host. I feel like we could do that. You and I have enough random
quotes that we can somewhat sort of attribute to we think it came from this
place, but it's definitely right. Yeah. To put something together.
And it will be like a small, very niche group of people that enjoy the type
of trivia that we can put together. It'll be like policy trivia,
random facts about the state, things I found in an industry publication I happened to pick up. Yeah.
(13:05):
I did that in my job interview for Empower. It worked out. So I just dropped a bunch of facts.
Excellent. boom so here we are yep here's what i
know that's the kind of thing in power there's like it
yes there's a reason we're attracted to empower missouri but you
know looking at farmers like family
farms are dying out and i think it's a little bit i do some work in food as
(13:28):
medicine and i see this thing happening it's like oh well like we need to sell
the tomatoes we grow but they can buy them cheaper in California and ship them
to a store in Missouri to sell,
or someone can buy the tomatoes that are being grown in Missouri and then ship
them to Tampa where they are put in like prescription grocery.
(13:52):
You know, tailored grocery boxes and then shipped all over the country.
And it's like, I don't know how we got to this place.
Right? That's wild. Isn't it? Yeah.
I was talking to a health insurer who was trying to do like delivering medically
tailored groceries to patients' homes. And that included like fresh produce, right?
(14:15):
And their complaint to me was, or their question that they were hoping I could
solve with my random trivia knowledge was,
I want to send $50 worth of perishable foods to one of our program members.
But in order to ship it to, in this case, it was a frontier county in Kansas,
(14:36):
it cost me $50 to ship $50 of food.
And I just thought like Missouri, Kansas, like we're growing a lot of food here.
Where is it being shipped from? It was being shipped from Tampa.
And I just thought we're doing something wrong, right? Like somehow someone
is making a profit along that chain. Oh, yeah.
And so I kind of have this great hope for us that we can use this healthy food
(15:02):
financing initiative to figure out how to really tap into our regional food systems.
How can this benefit all of Missouri, like family farmers, right?
So is it a thing about, so like, I know nothing.
Is it a thing where like the USDA has to certify farms, right?
So like the big farms that are in these more temperate places? says.
(15:25):
Are more likely to be able to participate in those programs and smaller farms
who have like, my goal is to feed, you know, our three families.
And then we have this extra stuff that we sell at a farmer's market.
They're not going to be able to qualify for those types of like certifications
inspections. Is it that type of a thing?
So I think there are some different safety and organic and different types of
(15:49):
certification, which again, outside my wheelhouse.
But I think it's more that like an individual farmer needs to price their produce
higher based on how much they're making to make a profit or how much they're
producing to make a profit.
So part of food enterprise projects that can be included are things like food hubs.
(16:10):
So regional food hubs. So maybe it's six farmers in a region who get together
and say, all right, let's grow these different things.
We will then bring them all into this food hub where they're aggregated,
they're cleaned, they're like, you know, we have contracts for how we're going to get them out.
So it's like kind of like using like the power of bringing multiple farmers
(16:33):
together in a region through something like giving them a food hub where they
can coordinate their efforts and be able to like kind of meet the larger demand
that often a single farm can't meet.
I mean, what if food hubs could be in a region and they could start supplying
some of those little mom and pop or school-based stores or whatever?
(16:55):
I just think there's a lot of potential.
And one of the things I love about healthy food financing is it allows us to
think outside of the box. It's built for us to think outside the box.
So there are funders that we're working with. One of the grant partners is IFF.
They are a Community Development Finance institution. They have worked on similar
(17:16):
projects in states like Illinois and Kansas, but they like working with nonprofit models, right? So-
Part of the, there's a grant making process that is often part of this.
So grants for pre-development, grants to do a business analysis,
like technical assistance to help people figure out how to move their project idea forward.
(17:36):
But in the loan, you won't find a traditional bank that's going to make a loan
to something like a nonprofit grocery store, right? It's an unknown entity.
Where's the profitability? How do you assess risk there? And so the whole point
of HFFI programs is like there's a greater good that needs to be accomplished.
(17:58):
And so we're going to offset some of the risk for lenders.
So maybe that is a pool of money to help offset risk for those who are making loans.
Maybe it's that we're buying interest rates down on loans so that the amount
that these new enterprises are paying is less than they would for a traditional loan.
(18:19):
But it essentially creates a market where there are loan and grant products
available for innovative or unconventional programs,
which we're to a place in these areas where we need some unconventional or innovative
solutions. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
All of what ails us is solvable. It's just going to take some creativity and
(18:41):
some bravery and a little bit of science and math.
Yeah. So I like that. I love it. How are we going to get there in Missouri, Trina?
So I love this grant because it's a partnership grant, right?
And so we partnered to submit our application with University of Missouri Extension.
Oh, good. They're doing a bunch of like the data crunching for us.
(19:04):
They're also supplying the Missouri Eats program,
which is like this community engagement program that can help communities who
have identified that this is a need that they have, like to increase healthy food access.
It moves them through this community building process to surface the best ways
(19:25):
for them to engage. So we're going to use that with some of our rural communities
to help them figure out like what do they want a food co-op?
Do they want, you know, like what is it that will best meet their needs and
like provide them with that support and technical assistance and get them to
a place where we have like a pipeline of fundable rural projects.
(19:47):
So really excited to see and partner with University of Missouri Extension on that.
We have IFF at the table to help us understand the lending component and that
whole money part of this.
And then we also have Missouri Coalition for the Environment,
who they've been working for years to support the regional food system,
(20:08):
as well as doing a lot of advocacy work in the capital.
And so they bring a nice combination of like understanding the healthy food
access issues along with a really deep understanding of like some of the farm
and environmental issues at play.
So that's ours like starting contingent. We just did a public webinar yesterday
(20:29):
kind of putting out the call for other people to come join us in this partnership.
We're calling it the Missouri Rural Food Access Partnership.
It's a little bit of a misnomer. While there is focus on providing technical
assistance and helping to elevate those rural projects, really,
we want to create a healthy food financing initiative for all of Missouri.
(20:53):
We've put out kind of an all-call for partners. Do you work in a rural area
or an urban area where food access is an issue?
Does it touch a client population that you're working with? We had some folks
join us from Southwest Missouri who work with like Meals on Wheels home delivery
for seniors in Southwest Missouri.
(21:15):
And they talked about how difficult it is for seniors in rural areas to get
out of their house, right?
Or get to a grocery store and get what they need outside of those home delivered meals.
Are you in health care, right? We have well established that healthy food access,
having access and affordability are key to maintaining good health and helping
(21:38):
to treat health conditions.
So we want our healthcare partners to become engaged in this.
How do people get connected?
Yeah. So they can go to the Empower Missouri website.
And we have a page now about the Missouri Rural Food Access Partnership where they can sign up for...
To get announcements or updates on what's going on.
(22:01):
And it's also like, I want to join this partnership as a button on there.
And so if they click that, I will follow up with them to hear their thoughts on it.
So it's just empowermissouri.org backslash M-R-F-A-P.
Excellent. So folks will, this is how they can get in touch with you to hear
random facts and also to find out about healthy food financing.
(22:24):
I mean, we can discuss the state fruit tree. I love a good pawpaw.
We can talk about their knowledge of the transportation system and how that works in rural America.
It seems like we have a gap there. Yeah, perfect.
We have a gap and this is one of those, everyone's impacted by food access, right?
(22:46):
Like we all need access to food. So this touches, there's so many pieces of
the world that this project touches.
I'm just hoping we can bring together like a really robust contingent in this
partnership to help influence in the next three years that we are able to pass
a statute establishing healthy food financing for Missouri.
(23:07):
And that's going to include asking the Missouri legislature and our governor's
office to make an investment of public funding in that to support that technical assistance,
grants and loans, but also finding those private partners who want to come to
the table and see that there is a benefit in providing financial support for
(23:28):
these types of initiative.
Yeah. Well, if anybody can do it, it's you, Trina. I full faith in you.
I feel excited. I mean, I'm super excited. I don't know if you can tell,
but like this is, I love this. I love like bringing people together.
Just yesterday in the 55 minutes we spent with people, so many cool ideas were
coming out and considerations.
(23:48):
So like, it's going to like, I'm going to build a mind palace,
but completely around how this all, all things food related and transportation related intersect.
That's amazing. Watch out, Sherlock. There you go. I'm on board.
Awesome. Well, thanks, Trina, for joining us.
Oh, my gosh. Thanks for having me. It's nice to be back. Yeah.
(24:09):
We missed having you around.
All right. Well, enjoy your summer and we'll keep you updated on what's going on. Sounds great.
Music.
Music.
(00:59):
Have happened. Legislative session is over. So you survived the rest of the
rest of that. And it's hot out.
Those are the two changes from February. That's it. That's all that's happened.
You're caught up now. Yeah. And then of course, Empower Missouri received this
$1 million healthy food financing initiative partnership program grant sometime in, I believe, April.
(01:22):
So that happened. We can add that as a third thing. That is a third thing that
happened. It felt less expected than being hot now.
I think it was. I mean, it was a national request for proposals.
And it's my understanding there were 55 proposals submitted across the country.
16 were funded. And so we submitted the application wanting to be able to have
(01:47):
this grant and funding to work on healthy food financing in Missouri.
But I think we all thought it was a long shot, that it would be pretty competitive.
So it was a delightful surprise as we were getting towards the last few weeks
of legislative session.
Maybe put us a little bit in the overwhelmed category while trying to wrap that up.
(02:09):
But now that we've all had some time for breathing room, fully entered into
the excited, excited mode of dealing with this.
I think when Mallory told me that we received that funding, the two of us just
laughed for like three and a half straight minutes, just like as it hit us and
washed over our holes, all of our senses, right?
(02:32):
Yeah. This is great. And also, what are we going to do now? Yeah.
I mean, it's great. We have a million dollars and three years to do capacity
building with an array of partners in Missouri to hopefully get us to a point
where we have, at the end of that three years,
a funded or fundable statewide healthy food financing initiative.
(02:56):
That's amazing. Trina, explain what healthy food financing is and means. Yeah.
So it's a concept that's about 20 years in the making.
Pennsylvania led the PAC starting in 2004 by creating the Pennsylvania Fresh
Food Financing Initiative.
And what that is, is essentially it creates by state statute...
(03:21):
It's essentially like a framework by which the state can invest dollars,
grant dollars and loan dollars, into helping to establish healthy food access
in areas that currently lack that access.
Typically, those areas are going to be urban, so city areas that are what we
(03:43):
used to refer referred to as food deserts, or now referred to as low-income,
low-access areas, and rural areas.
There has been a trend over the past 20 years that those mom-and-pop grocery
stores in rural areas of America and rural areas of Missouri,
there's no one to take those over when folks want to retire.
(04:08):
And there's not a lot of profit to be made in grocery.
If you read the industry Street Publications, which I sometimes dabble in,
you will see that... Sounds fascinating.
What great reading. Right? They're making one to three percent off groceries.
It's all about volume. And that's not something you have when you're talking
about our more rural areas of the U.S.
(04:31):
So you've slowly seen this kind of dying breed of mom and pop grocery stores,
which have created these huge areas that lack access and really can't support
a traditional grocery store model anymore.
So people are maybe driving 20 miles to get to the closest Walmart,
(04:51):
but, or, you know, they have to buy their food at a dollar store, which, you know.
There's dollar generals on every corner, and there are a million publications
about why that's problematic in a policy.
Right. I remember reading one, and I believe the title was like dollar stores are killing America.
And it was about the fact that with those being in many rural or urbanized areas,
(05:15):
the only place where people could buy food, they don't do perishable food.
So we're not talking about having access to any fresh fruits and vegetables.
It was typically like processed, shelf-stable foods that a good percentage of
Americans were coming to rely on as the primary source of their groceries.
(05:38):
So healthy food financing essentially creates grants and loans to support the
pre-development, development,
and building of what they refer to as food retail projects.
So those are things like your brick and mortar stores, but maybe it's a a nonprofit grocery store.
(06:01):
Maybe it's a co-op. Maybe it's a slightly different model from what we think
of when we think of a traditional grocery store because we know that the profitability isn't there.
Or it's a food enterprise project. And so food enterprise is anything along the food.
Distribution value chain. So one of the big problems with getting,
(06:24):
even if you want to start a grocery store in rural America, in rural Missouri,
how do you get suppliers out there?
Because is it worth someone's time and energy if you have a small grocery store
that only needs to be stocked every couple of weeks?
Does it make sense to send a truck out there to resupply that store.
(06:47):
And so there's, you know, issues along the entire supply chain that need to
be addressed. Yeah, it's really interesting.
I always think like Missouri is special. It's probably not special,
but there's a lot of parts of Missouri that even in the cities and even close
to an interstate, you're hours away from, right?
(07:08):
I mean, you hear about it takes like a super long time to drive Texas, right?
And there's parts of Missouri where leaving in Kansas City, I might be six hours
from being able to get to a rural area within Missouri.
I did not really think about how that would impact things like,
you know, big trucks getting into those areas and the little tiny highways that,
(07:29):
I don't know things about trucks. Can you drive big trucks on little tiny?
I mean, I know there's like capacity issues on the roads.
While I might dabble in industry publications related to grocery, I'm sure not.
I haven't made my way into the trucking industry yet. Well, maybe someday.
But, you know, I mean, everything is based on profitability.
(07:51):
And so you have to, in the way we currently structure groceries,
you know, it's built on, we're a capitalist country, right? Really? Yeah.
This just in. Uh-huh. Brand new information right from the podcast.
Everything, in case you missed it, everything is based on a business model.
(08:12):
All of our problems boil down to the pursuit of money over everything else.
So someone isn't going to deliver supplies to your grocery store out of the
goodness of their heart and take a loss on gas and mileage and paying someone
to do it, right? Right. And so we have to think outside the box.
And that is what I love about healthy food financing initiatives is when you
(08:35):
look across the country, you see people coming up with some really ingenious
ideas of how we reestablish food access in areas that have lost it.
I mean, you see something like a mobile market, right? We have several of those
here in Missouri, where someone takes a bus or some other sort of truck and
essentially creates a grocery store, a little mini grocery store on wheels.
(09:00):
Yeah, we just gave an award to your friends there at Operation Food Search for their mobile grocery.
It has a name, whatever it is. The St. Louis Metro Market. It's amazing.
There you go. Shout out to my friend, Quentin Ward, who runs that.
But it's great because they are able to take that truck or that bus and establish routes, right?
(09:21):
So you know then if you live in an area Every Tuesday, for example,
the Metro Market is in my neighborhood from this time to this time.
And I can go there and I can get my groceries, including fresh fruits and vegetables.
And bonus, I can use my SNAP benefits there.
And so that's also a really important piece of healthy food financing initiatives
(09:41):
is that we know these are often low-income areas in addition to being low access.
And so part of the national strategy is to make sure that we're establishing
venues that allow folks to utilize things like their SNAP and WIC benefits.
Yeah. And so, you know, maybe it's a mobile market. Maybe it's a brick and mortar.
(10:04):
There are examples across the country of like schools starting grocery stores.
Oh, that's super smart. Yeah.
I mean, the most rural access that I have is my oldest brother lives in a very
tiny town outside of Kansas City, and all of the school's age kids are in one building together.
It would make so much sense to have resources right there in that place for that community.
(10:27):
When you talk about rural areas, or even some urban areas, school districts
can be like anchor institutions, right?
And so it's something that a lot of people will be coming into contact with.
And so there are examples where it's like, yes, we're going to open a grocery store because,
The ability of our families to have access to groceries impacts children's ability
(10:48):
to learn. Well-established, right?
And so there's a vested interest in making sure that families have access.
It is also a training ground, right? If it's on a school campus,
what a great way you can incorporate that into your curricula.
I mean, teaching kids how to make business plans, maybe preparing them for management roles.
(11:11):
Maybe it's a first job that you work there.
But I think there's a lot of potential there, and it's great to see those types of models come up.
Another model that I have heard of is small municipalities, rural municipalities,
starting grocery stores.
So a village of, you know, a certain name here, starting a grocery store and
(11:35):
really thinking of it or looking at it almost like a utility.
Just like the residents of that municipality need access to water and electricity.
They need access to groceries.
So I love seeing that sort of innovation. That's a great plan.
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.
And I think there's also a place in this, and this is near and dear to my heart,
(11:57):
how do we incorporate the regional food economy, right?
And by that, I mean, we're in like an agrarian state.
Missouri, I believe our biggest export is actually agriculture.
I might be wrong, but I think I read that on the Missouri Department of Agriculture
website. They would know.
(12:18):
They're the kind of experts we want to quote as potentially that's where we got it.
We may have gotten that bit. I like to just collect little bits of information.
I don't know what kind of trivia night it's going to be that I will succeed in. Yeah.
Because this is not, these questions never come up when I go to like a fundraising trivia night.
(12:39):
Now I want to host. I feel like we could do that. You and I have enough random
quotes that we can somewhat sort of attribute to we think it came from this
place, but it's definitely right. Yeah. To put something together.
And it will be like a small, very niche group of people that enjoy the type
of trivia that we can put together. It'll be like policy trivia,
random facts about the state, things I found in an industry publication I happened to pick up. Yeah.
(13:05):
I did that in my job interview for Empower. It worked out. So I just dropped a bunch of facts.
Excellent. boom so here we are yep here's what i
know that's the kind of thing in power there's like it
yes there's a reason we're attracted to empower missouri but you
know looking at farmers like family
farms are dying out and i think it's a little bit i do some work in food as
(13:28):
medicine and i see this thing happening it's like oh well like we need to sell
the tomatoes we grow but they can buy them cheaper in California and ship them
to a store in Missouri to sell,
or someone can buy the tomatoes that are being grown in Missouri and then ship
them to Tampa where they are put in like prescription grocery.
(13:52):
You know, tailored grocery boxes and then shipped all over the country.
And it's like, I don't know how we got to this place.
Right? That's wild. Isn't it? Yeah.
I was talking to a health insurer who was trying to do like delivering medically
tailored groceries to patients' homes. And that included like fresh produce, right?
(14:15):
And their complaint to me was, or their question that they were hoping I could
solve with my random trivia knowledge was,
I want to send $50 worth of perishable foods to one of our program members.
But in order to ship it to, in this case, it was a frontier county in Kansas,
(14:36):
it cost me $50 to ship $50 of food.
And I just thought like Missouri, Kansas, like we're growing a lot of food here.
Where is it being shipped from? It was being shipped from Tampa.
And I just thought we're doing something wrong, right? Like somehow someone
is making a profit along that chain. Oh, yeah.
And so I kind of have this great hope for us that we can use this healthy food
(15:02):
financing initiative to figure out how to really tap into our regional food systems.
How can this benefit all of Missouri, like family farmers, right?
So is it a thing about, so like, I know nothing.
Is it a thing where like the USDA has to certify farms, right?
So like the big farms that are in these more temperate places? says.
(15:25):
Are more likely to be able to participate in those programs and smaller farms
who have like, my goal is to feed, you know, our three families.
And then we have this extra stuff that we sell at a farmer's market.
They're not going to be able to qualify for those types of like certifications
inspections. Is it that type of a thing?
So I think there are some different safety and organic and different types of
(15:49):
certification, which again, outside my wheelhouse.
But I think it's more that like an individual farmer needs to price their produce
higher based on how much they're making to make a profit or how much they're
producing to make a profit.
So part of food enterprise projects that can be included are things like food hubs.
(16:10):
So regional food hubs. So maybe it's six farmers in a region who get together
and say, all right, let's grow these different things.
We will then bring them all into this food hub where they're aggregated,
they're cleaned, they're like, you know, we have contracts for how we're going to get them out.
So it's like kind of like using like the power of bringing multiple farmers
(16:33):
together in a region through something like giving them a food hub where they
can coordinate their efforts and be able to like kind of meet the larger demand
that often a single farm can't meet.
I mean, what if food hubs could be in a region and they could start supplying
some of those little mom and pop or school-based stores or whatever?
(16:55):
I just think there's a lot of potential.
And one of the things I love about healthy food financing is it allows us to
think outside of the box. It's built for us to think outside the box.
So there are funders that we're working with. One of the grant partners is IFF.
They are a Community Development Finance institution. They have worked on similar
(17:16):
projects in states like Illinois and Kansas, but they like working with nonprofit models, right? So-
Part of the, there's a grant making process that is often part of this.
So grants for pre-development, grants to do a business analysis,
like technical assistance to help people figure out how to move their project idea forward.
(17:36):
But in the loan, you won't find a traditional bank that's going to make a loan
to something like a nonprofit grocery store, right? It's an unknown entity.
Where's the profitability? How do you assess risk there? And so the whole point
of HFFI programs is like there's a greater good that needs to be accomplished.
(17:58):
And so we're going to offset some of the risk for lenders.
So maybe that is a pool of money to help offset risk for those who are making loans.
Maybe it's that we're buying interest rates down on loans so that the amount
that these new enterprises are paying is less than they would for a traditional loan.
(18:19):
But it essentially creates a market where there are loan and grant products
available for innovative or unconventional programs,
which we're to a place in these areas where we need some unconventional or innovative
solutions. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
All of what ails us is solvable. It's just going to take some creativity and
(18:41):
some bravery and a little bit of science and math.
Yeah. So I like that. I love it. How are we going to get there in Missouri, Trina?
So I love this grant because it's a partnership grant, right?
And so we partnered to submit our application with University of Missouri Extension.
Oh, good. They're doing a bunch of like the data crunching for us.
(19:04):
They're also supplying the Missouri Eats program,
which is like this community engagement program that can help communities who
have identified that this is a need that they have, like to increase healthy food access.
It moves them through this community building process to surface the best ways
(19:25):
for them to engage. So we're going to use that with some of our rural communities
to help them figure out like what do they want a food co-op?
Do they want, you know, like what is it that will best meet their needs and
like provide them with that support and technical assistance and get them to
a place where we have like a pipeline of fundable rural projects.
(19:47):
So really excited to see and partner with University of Missouri Extension on that.
We have IFF at the table to help us understand the lending component and that
whole money part of this.
And then we also have Missouri Coalition for the Environment,
who they've been working for years to support the regional food system,
(20:08):
as well as doing a lot of advocacy work in the capital.
And so they bring a nice combination of like understanding the healthy food
access issues along with a really deep understanding of like some of the farm
and environmental issues at play.
So that's ours like starting contingent. We just did a public webinar yesterday
(20:29):
kind of putting out the call for other people to come join us in this partnership.
We're calling it the Missouri Rural Food Access Partnership.
It's a little bit of a misnomer. While there is focus on providing technical
assistance and helping to elevate those rural projects, really,
we want to create a healthy food financing initiative for all of Missouri.
(20:53):
We've put out kind of an all-call for partners. Do you work in a rural area
or an urban area where food access is an issue?
Does it touch a client population that you're working with? We had some folks
join us from Southwest Missouri who work with like Meals on Wheels home delivery
for seniors in Southwest Missouri.
(21:15):
And they talked about how difficult it is for seniors in rural areas to get
out of their house, right?
Or get to a grocery store and get what they need outside of those home delivered meals.
Are you in health care, right? We have well established that healthy food access,
having access and affordability are key to maintaining good health and helping
(21:38):
to treat health conditions.
So we want our healthcare partners to become engaged in this.
How do people get connected?
Yeah. So they can go to the Empower Missouri website.
And we have a page now about the Missouri Rural Food Access Partnership where they can sign up for...
To get announcements or updates on what's going on.
(22:01):
And it's also like, I want to join this partnership as a button on there.
And so if they click that, I will follow up with them to hear their thoughts on it.
So it's just empowermissouri.org backslash M-R-F-A-P.
Excellent. So folks will, this is how they can get in touch with you to hear
random facts and also to find out about healthy food financing.
(22:24):
I mean, we can discuss the state fruit tree. I love a good pawpaw.
We can talk about their knowledge of the transportation system and how that works in rural America.
It seems like we have a gap there. Yeah, perfect.
We have a gap and this is one of those, everyone's impacted by food access, right?
(22:46):
Like we all need access to food. So this touches, there's so many pieces of
the world that this project touches.
I'm just hoping we can bring together like a really robust contingent in this
partnership to help influence in the next three years that we are able to pass
a statute establishing healthy food financing for Missouri.
(23:07):
And that's going to include asking the Missouri legislature and our governor's
office to make an investment of public funding in that to support that technical assistance,
grants and loans, but also finding those private partners who want to come to
the table and see that there is a benefit in providing financial support for
(23:28):
these types of initiative.
Yeah. Well, if anybody can do it, it's you, Trina. I full faith in you.
I feel excited. I mean, I'm super excited. I don't know if you can tell,
but like this is, I love this. I love like bringing people together.
Just yesterday in the 55 minutes we spent with people, so many cool ideas were
coming out and considerations.
(23:48):
So like, it's going to like, I'm going to build a mind palace,
but completely around how this all, all things food related and transportation related intersect.
That's amazing. Watch out, Sherlock. There you go. I'm on board.
Awesome. Well, thanks, Trina, for joining us.
Oh, my gosh. Thanks for having me. It's nice to be back. Yeah.
(24:09):
We missed having you around.
All right. Well, enjoy your summer and we'll keep you updated on what's going on. Sounds great.
Music.
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