Nov 03, 2025
By Rick McNary
I enjoy a banana each morning with my breakfast. I have no idea where it comes from but can safely bet it, like many calories I consume, has traveled an average of 1,500 miles to reach my plate. That’s the beauty of our international food system — we can enjoy food from all over the world.
But when it comes to beef, pork, chicken, turkey and in-season produce, we are fortunate to enjoy products made locally. According to most definitions, “local” is defined as somewhere within a 500-mile range. For someone like me who lives near Wichita, any farm in Kansas is easily within 500 miles of my home and, since we have a particular fondness for Kansas farmers and ranchers, we buy from them. For those of us fortunate enough to have local options nearby, it’s rewarding to support those local farmers and ranchers and enjoy food that didn’t travel far to reach our plate.
Many farmers and ranchers who sell their products directly to consumers also have convenient pickup or delivery options, which makes it easier than ever to purchase from them. With a rise in popularity of local products comes a rise in “local” as a label.
For example, I recently saw “local” blueberries in a major grocer in Kansas and, come to find out, they were raised in New Jersey. For us at Shop Kansas Farms (SKF), local means within the borders of Kansas. We’ve been insistent from the beginning that farms advertising on our site must be based in Kansas. Blueberries raised in Kansas are local. Blueberries raised in New Jersey are not. We support those blueberry farmers in New Jersey, and they’re just as safe as blueberries from Kansas, but the label is inaccurate according to our definition.
There’s also a growing movement to buy “hyper-local.” Again, clarifying that definition is as hard as trying to eat peas with a butterknife, but we settle with the definition that it is within 50-60 miles of where you live.
While our SKF website and Facebook group are local (Kansas is only 400 miles across and 200 miles deep), it can also be hyper-local whereby consumers can jump on our map and find growers near them.
Furthermore, we are launching Harvest Hubs to create a more robust supply of hyper-local foods. For example, our Border Queen Harvest Hub based out of Caldwell (known as the Border Queen city), encompasses a 50–60-mile region that dips into Oklahoma.
Our newest Sedgwick County Harvest Hub will encompass, of course, the geographic area of Sedgwick County. This hyper-local model has been created to connect consumers to local growers even better than our state-wide SKF model.
Just like that banana I eat each morning, there are three basic stages all food goes through to make it from the farm to your fork: production, processing and distribution. I have no idea where my banana was grown but when it was ready to be harvested, it had to go through some kind of cool/cold storage processing to make sure it could make it through the next stage of distribution where it arrived on a refrigerated truck to my local grocery store. We’re lucky to get to enjoy bananas in Kansas – which we don’t raise, of course. But when we can support the people who raise products within our state’s borders, we take the opportunity.
Our Harvest Hubs are focused on building up the hyper-local system of production, processing and distribution so you can purchase both meat protein and produce within 50 miles of your home. For those farmers, ranchers and growers who want to raise and sell products to you, they must have those three components present and viable to be successful.
Therefore, our strategy includes supporting the production (farmers, rancher and growers) of food, increasing the capacity for processing (cool/cold storage, meat processors, commercial kitchens) as well as creative distribution systems that make access to local and hyper-local foods even easier for you, the consumer.
We at SKF have always been both/and rather than either/or when it comes to the food you eat. Our efforts are driven by the idea of giving you a choice of knowing where your food comes from and truly supporting your local and hyper-local farmers.