State announces Iowa product promotion grants at Nora Springs farm

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A state program expansion that was announced this week in Nora Springs is aimed at promoting Iowa products and increasing connections among producers and with consumers.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig was at Skyview Farms in Nora Springs Wednesday morning to announce that the 2023 Choose Iowa marketing and promotion grants can now be applied for.

The program matches up to $25,000 per project to help Iowa farmers, businesses and nonprofit organizations increase or diversify their agricultural product offerings. In this round, $460,000 is available for one-to-one matching grants, up from the $250,000 that was available in the first round.

Taking advantage of that first round of grants is Skyview Farms, owned by Laura and Aaron Cunningham. The couple’s farm north of Nora Springs was awarded almost $10,000 earlier this year to expand its existing direct sale beef business into a beef, pork, poultry and egg food hub serving Iowans.

Laura Cunningham said she and her husband had been marketing beef from their spring and fall calving herds direct to customers for about 10 years. But when grocery stores started running out of meat in April 2020 near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she not only sold out their entire beef inventory but their bookings for the rest of the year and six months into 2021.

“That was great for our business. It grew really fast,” Cunningham said. “But at the end of that I still had people calling, and I was out of product. I wanted to make sure they could connect with other people, so I reached out to friends, pork, chicken, all of the different meat producers that I can think of, and started building this network and referring people as they came to me.

“We had been in the business for awhile, had a presence online, so we were easy to find. But there’s more people who do this work but maybe weren’t as easy to find,” she said.

The Cunninghams applied for and were awarded a 2022 Choose Iowa grant, one of 13 winning applicants selected out of 113 applications that had made more than $2 million in requests.

With $9,770 in state money and their own funds they started a renovation project that’s going to create a storefront to sell their products and the products of fellow producers.

“What I also learned over these years is, in addition to great meat products, people are looking for a connection to the farm,” Cunningham said. “They want to see the animals. They want to meet who raised them and cares for them. The thing that we were lacking in our business was a presence on the farm, or a place where people could come to shop, view the animals, talk with us.”

In addition to the storefront they will be creating a food hub so other producers who want to market direct to consumers will have a central location.

“We can offer the beef that we raise,” she said. “I’m not a chicken farmer – I don’t know anything about raising chickens – but there are people around who are fabulous at it. So let’s work together, market together, give people one place that they can go to to find some of this great product that is raised right here in Iowa.”

Cunningham said they will resume their renovation project after harvest is done, then have a soft launch of the new “Skyview Market” next summer, with a full launch in the fall.

“There will be all kinds of producers. Meat to start, then hopefully bringing on some vegetable producers as well if we can get a cool case in addition to our freezer system,” Cunningham said.

“I love the concept. I love that our (state) leadership is getting behind this and bringing it back for another year. I can’t wait to see what might come out of it from other people coming up with projects that let our neighbors, our friends, our families Choose Iowa,” Cunningham said.

Naig said, “There’s a significant investment being made here and a vision they’ve got to make this happen. That is such a cool thing. And we’re seeing that happen all across the state.”

Applicants can use the Choose Iowa grants to try new processing, packaging and sales techniques that add value to the commodities that they produce. Grant funding can also be used for employee training and continuing education programs.

Individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations that are currently living or operating in Iowa can apply for the Choose Iowa marketing and promotion grants. Preference will be given to small to medium size businesses. Details about the grant program, including financial matching requirements, application, and eligibility, are available at chooseiowa.com/grant-program.

Applications should be submitted through the online portal and are due by 5 p.m. Dec. 15. Grant recipients will be announced in early 2023, the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship said.

Also a​​t the event Wednesday morning was Jessica Baldus, owner of three food and restaurant businesses in Osage – Taste, Piggyback Smoke Shack and The Bakery.

Baldus said she met Aaron and Laura Cunningham at a Healthy Harvest event 10 years ago after she had moved her first business from Des Moines to Osage.

“I’m on a mission to connect with farmers, growers and producers in hope of sourcing and providing our rural community with superior ingredients that would yield growth in what I like to think of as our local food movement,” Baldus said Wednesday morning.

She said the dream that the Cunninghams have with direct, sustainable beef sales is exactly what she was hoping to find.

“And to learn that they will now be expanding and will be able to offer pork, poultry and eggs is remarkable,” Baldus said.

“It’s exciting for me as a chef to be able to take advantage of direct sales, raised on and grown from some of the richest soil in the world. It’s exciting for consumers to reap the benefits of flavor, nutrients and superior products and dishes created by the opportunity of these direct local sales, and exciting that our producers are being presented with opportunities such as the Choose Iowa Grants program. It’s programs like this that will keep our rural communities thriving on many levels of our local food movement,” Baldus said.

Naig said, “There you have both ends of the supply chain here, and what we’re trying to do is help to connect them. There has been a significant amount of work around this, the local foods movement and building out those supply chains and supporting producers and building those markets out over many years.

“Really we’re just one little piece of trying to encourage and help connect the dots with folks,” Naig said. “I’m excited about this.”

Questions about the Choose Iowa marketing and promotion grants can be directed to chooseiowagrants@iowaagriculture.gov.