Extension’s ‘Veggie to Value’ Bootcamp focuses on creating value-added food products
By Rebekah Hall
U of A System Division of Agriculture
Sept. 29, 2023
Fast Facts:
- Bootcamp is part of Share Grounds educational and technical assistance program
- Entrepreneur clients learn value-added food production, processes, food safety regs
- Share Grounds aims to provide low-cost options for starting, expanding food businesses
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LITTLE ROCK — Starting or expanding a food business can be daunting, with many barriers to entry. For Arkansans navigating this process, the Cooperative Extension Service’s Share Grounds program offered a Veggie to Value Food Entrepreneur Bootcamp, in which clients received assistance in food production, safety regulations and scaling up their recipes.
The boot camp is part of Share Grounds, an educational and technical assistance program conducted by the Cooperative Extension Service. Extension is the outreach arm of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
Amanda Philyaw Perez, extension associate professor of food systems and food safety specialist for the Division of Agriculture, said her team received a Specialty Crop Block Grant from the Arkansas Department of Agriculture to make the boot camp possible.
“We worked to recruit food entrepreneurs to take them from the bare bones basics of getting a food business off the ground all the way through production,” Perez said.
Share Grounds has a commercial kitchen facility at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds in Rison, Arkansas, complete with commercial food processing equipment. The Veggie to Value clients received technical assistance from Perez and David Hill, extension program associate for food systems and food safety for the Division of Agriculture.
Clients used fresh produce from Barnhill Orchards in Lonoke to create value-added food products. These take a raw commodity and change it to create a new product, such as the transformation of fruits into jams or jellies, or tomatoes and peppers made into salsa.
Client spotlight
Loretta Smith recently purchased 50 acres of land in Carthage, Arkansas, as a retirement plan. She and her husband are in the beginning stages of planning their future farm and orchard, and Smith applied for the Veggie to Value program because she was interested in expanding their eventual revenue options.
“I knew from personal experience growing up on a farm and training in operations that you can’t control all of the variability on a farm,” Smith said. “Knowing that I’ll have varying amounts of production when I have bumper crops, I need a plan to do something with that and extend my revenue stream.”
Smith is an associate professor of management at Arkansas Tech University, and she said getting started in the field of commercial food production was “not something I could do by myself.”
“I knew that was an area of expertise I didn’t have, and it’s not something that’s simple to navigate,” Smith said. “You’re talking about the chemistry of cooking, and I don’t have the equipment or the knowledge for that.”
Smith’s food product is based on an old family recipe for mock apple rings. Throughout the boot camp, Smith said they pivoted to making a mock apple butter for food safety reasons.
“To get the water activity and the pH right, we navigated from mock apple rings to mock applesauce or mock apple butter,” Smith said. “When we taste tested the various recipes, people had no idea that it’s actually made of cucumbers, because it tastes like a spicy cinnamon apple.”
Paul Lipe has a 9-acre homestead north of Searcy in White County. Lipe said he applied for the Veggie to Value boot camp to learn more about the legal regulations and technical aspects of commercial food production, which he hopes to eventually do on his own land.
“It’s been a goal of mine for the past few years to open a mom-and-pop, old-timey type of store, and I was interested in trying to brand some of my own products in the store and make them on-site,” Lipe said. “I thought this program would be useful to learn the ins and outs of food manufacturing versus making it in my own kitchen or in a retail environment.”
Lipe’s recipe uses caramelized onions, balsamic vinegar and red pepper flakes to make a “Sweet Vidalia Heat” sauce and marinade. He said the boot camp provided important information about tracking recipe development and food regulations.
“One of the eye-openers that I’ve encountered is keeping accountability and traceability of your products coming in and going out,” Lipe said. “I was already pretty familiar with sanitation practices and safe cooking methods, but it was good to get an idea of how to scale that up from small batch to larger batches, even if you’re not in a factory setting, just trying to produce a few hundred units at a time.
“It’s about scalability and the regulations that you’ve got to take care of,” he said. “That’s been real helpful.”
Lessons learned
Smith said the Veggie to Value program has been an “incredible learning opportunity.”
“The business side of food production, particularly value-added production, was just not something I’d really thought about or ventured into,” Smith said. “People assume it’s pretty simple, but it’s not. To stay on the right side of the law and keep everybody healthy is a complex process.”
Having the assistance and expertise of Perez and Hill was a crucial element of the program, Smith said.
“Knowing who to call, what to do and where to look for the answers as we get further and further into the process, we wouldn’t have that knowledge if not for the program and working with David,” she said. “With scaling up, David’s got the experience to say, ‘You can push it this far.’ We didn’t have to try and fail and waste all that product.”
Lipe said his experience in the program also cut out time he would have spent researching solutions.
“The technical help and the consultations, being able to ask questions and get a straight answer and not have to do hours and hours of research on your own, it’s definitely worth the time and investment,” he said. “Not to mention the availability of other resources and facilities.”
Hill said the Veggie to Value boot camp provided space for the clients to determine how they want to move forward with their business or idea.
“Not everybody can do what these people want to do,” Hill said. “Some people get in it, and they say, ‘That’s just too much work.’ And then there are other people who get in it, and they can’t get enough of it. You’ve got to figure out what’s best for that individual, and that individual has to find out what’s best for themselves.”
To learn more about the Share Grounds program and starting a food business in Arkansas, visit the Local, Regional and Safe Foods page on the Cooperative Extension Service’s website.
To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uada.edu. Follow on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 20 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on five system campuses.
The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs to all eligible persons without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.
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Media Contact:
Rebekah Hall
rkhall@uada.edu
@RKHall_
501-671-2061