Taste the Local Difference – $25,000

This grant supports a pilot project designed to expand Michigan’s local food infrastructure by helping mid-sized, often BIPOC-owned farms in the greater Flint region transition from direct-to-consumer markets into wholesale channels. By pairing individualized readiness assessments with marketing tools, producer stipends, and facilitated connections to institutional buyers, the project builds the supply-side capacity necessary for emerging regional food hubs and wholesale distributors to reliably source Michigan-grown products. This initiative directly supports Americana’s Ag/FS priority to strengthen local food economies through improved market access and distribution. By targeting farms historically excluded from wholesale markets and partnering with Flint Fresh’s aggregation and logistics backbone, the project helps fill a critical gap in Michigan’s regional food value chain, with potential for replication statewide.