The eastern food hub collaborative (EFC) is a group of 15 food hubs and regional networks focused on increasing transactions among its members

This collaborative seeks to solve problems of supply and seasonality of local food, increase efficiency and market opportunities, and promote transparency, all in the interest of supporting small farmers and local economies in the eastern united states (from southern maine to south carolina). Working together, hubs plan for and procure from other hubs specialty crops that are not yet or no longer in season in their own region. They take advantage of existing hub infrastructure such as centrally located warehouses and coordinate logistics to maximize efficiency, ensuring that trucks do not travel without product. They support each other in marketing, and they source food from one another to help with hunger alleviation and food access programs in their respective regions. This planning grant will help build the systems needed to support this network. Its goals are to a) understand gaps in regional food systems in the EFC footprint, B) accurately measure the progress made by food hubs over time, improve efficiency, and address weaknesses in data collection and in the supply chain, C) better coordinate supply and demand needs throughout the network, increase the number of transactions, and ensure that the network has resources needed to operate effectively, and D) increase food system resilience and mitigate future crises by having a system to track and quickly deploy local food resources.