Pasture To Plate

Pasture To Plate will create a mobile certified legal kitchen space for value addition and food-related programming to be offered legally on farms. Pasture To Plate’s events will include workshops that provide attendees with the opportunity for learning and participation in animal husbandry, butchery, and cooking, on-farm-meals, and items available for direct purchase from the host farm. Once a farm has hosted an event and been trained in the use of the space that farm may rent the mobile kitchen to offer their own food-related programming, or make value-added products to sell.

Adding value to raw farm products, such as tomato sauce and jam, as well as providing a certified space to legally prepare farm dinners and host workshops, has great potential to aid in healthy rural development, create community-based jobs, and increase small farm economic viability. Regulations and food safety standards, though necessary, make it difficult for small, diversified farms to add value to their raw farm products. Two significant barriers that farmers face in adding value to their product are:

  • They do not have the organization, structure, and support to create value added events and products on their farms,
  • They do not have, and often cannot afford, to invest in a certified kitchen space that would allow legal sale of value-added food products.

Pasture to Plate addresses both of these barriers offering a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable entrepreneurial model for rural development and increased farm profits. Pasture To Plate will not only help boost farm profits, increasing farmer quality of life, but will also foster a stronger community of connected consumers and producers. Pasture To Plate is a visionary project that will help grow a more diverse and resilient regional food system.

Service Provider: 
Pasture To Plate
Contact:
Margiana Petersen-Rockney
Frequency: 
Ongoing
Cost: 
Fee
Location: 
57 County Street Rehoboth, MA
Counties Served: 
Barnstable
Bristol
Dukes
Essex
Franklin
Hampden
Hampshire
Middlesex
Norfolk
Plymouth
Suffolk
Worcester
Resource Type: 
Class or Course
Workshop
Social/Networking
Resource Category: 
Business Planning
Equipment/Mechanics/Welding
General Production
Livestock Processing
Marketing
On Farm Food Safety
Value Added
Enterprise Type: 
Compost
Dairy
Floriculture
Forest Products
Grains
Greenhouse Production
Hay
Livestock
Nursery
Orchard
Poultry
Sugaring
Vegetable Crops
Skill Level: 
Planning to farm
Farmer start up
Re-strategizing the farm
Established farmer