Local Foods Map Links Consumers and Producers in North Dakota

In partnership with: North Dakota Department of Agriculture

Demand for local-raised beef has doubled annually since 2015 for Feiring’s Grassfed Beef, a family ranching operation putting itself on the literal map in western North Dakota.

“Our business is to make connections with our customers and have that good relationship,” says Trish Feiring, who runs the grass-fed beef and pastured poultry business with her husband, Donnie, and their two daughters in Beach. “We want to sell a product, not just a commodity.”

The North Dakota Department of Agriculture (NDDA) has placed food producers like the Feirings on a digital map, pinpointing opportunities for consumers to connect with farmers and ranchers to buy local foods. While available for years, the map’s use skyrocketed when COVID-19 hit, prompting the department to enhance it for optimum user experience.

Pre-pandemic, about a half-dozen North Dakotans a day browsed the map of direct-sales locations in the state where they could buy beef, fresh eggs, produce and home-canned goods. That spiked to around 400 visits per day during the pandemic’s early months, says Jamie Good, local foods and organics marketing specialist for the NDDA.

“The pandemic caused a big shift for folks looking for alternatives in their own backyard,” he says. “The pandemic really made people want to understand where their food is coming from and take a hard look at that.”

See more: North Dakota Offers Unique Foods Grown Locally

Meeting Local Demand

The demand for local food exceeds the capacity for time and labor at the Feiring family’s ranch, where they raise broilers for poultry meat, cattle for beef and laying hens for eggs. They sell beef in quantities as small as snack sticks to as large as freezer-filling cuts by the quarter, half or whole animal.

“More and more people understand that a tie between the producer and the consumer is important,” Trish says. “There has been a huge trend in local foods. I think over time, the growth will continue to steadily get better.”

The NDDA has twice updated its interactive online map from spring 2020 to spring 2021. The updates allow users to sort map information based on the commodity, such as beef, pork, fruits, vegetables, baked goods and jellies. The digital tool expands producer profiles, improves search functions and grants users the ability to send inquiries to farmers. The layout includes around 50 farmers markets and more than 360 map markers for anything from produce and poultry to U-pick farms and Community Supported Agriculture programs.

Good says the consumer searchability upgrades make North Dakota’s digital mapping tool more enhanced than many other states’ online local foods maps.

On the Map

Market owner and vendor Danielle Mickelson uses the NDDA’s maps frequently, encouraging patrons to visit markets throughout the region. The NDDA still prints a paper map of farmers market locations in addition to the online version.

“We find that the map is a really nice talking piece for a world that is increasingly passionate about local foods,” says Mickelson, who runs Mickelson Tiny Plants and owns Lena’s Fresh Farmers Market in downtown Rolla with her husband. The family grows fruits and vegetables and makes baked goods. They also preserve upward of 30 varieties of canned products, including pickles, jams and sauces from their garden produce.

As with most cottage food businesses, the family started small, selling from a card table and kitchen bowls. Mickelson quit her teaching job and steadily grew to purchase a permanent site for a two-day-a-week farmers market. She has recorded only growth since, and the pandemic supported that trend across all product offerings.

“As people hunkered down in their small towns, local foods became a rock for them to stand on,” Mickelson says. “It was the place they would get fresh fruits, vegetables, sourdough bread and all the products that were not being shipped as efficiently into their town anymore.”

To view the North Dakota Local Foods Directory Map, visit nd.gov/ndda/NDLFMAP.