HOUGHTON COUNTY – For a number of years, agriculture has been experiencing a resurgence across the Upper Peninsula, especially here in Houghton County.

Local initiatives, increased land use for agriculture and a growing interest in local food systems are contributing to the trend. The focus is on smaller, sustainable farms that can provide healthy, locally-sourced products, reducing reliance on national food distribution.

A new nonprofit organization, Keweenaw Marketing Association (KMA), is in the process of addressing many deficiencies local farmers market vendors are experiencing.

“We’re composed of different vendors from farmers, artisans,” Zack Osborn, KMA manager said. “I’m a mushroom grower myself; Michelle, owner of Copper Island, James Niemela, of Chassell — we’re some of the founding board members.”

Niemela was a co-organizer of the Chassell Farmers Market in 2022. The Chassell market is independent from the farmers market collaboration in other townships like Houghton and Calumet.

Osborn said the KMA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that formed at the beginning of this year, to organize farmers markets and to act as a “pan-market vendor group” for organization members to mobilize, share information, assist each other and distinguish KMA by creating different opportunities for different vendors to pool across educational training, etc. Pan marketing in this cases is a business approach that views the region as a single market and uses a standardized, uniform marketing strategy across its operational sphere. This entails selling the same products, using the same messaging, and employing the same promotional campaigns regionally.

KMA’s mission statement states it is dedicated to empowering small-scale businesses — especially youth and those in agricultural and artisan crafts — through opportunities and support that foster growth, sustainability, and community connections.

“On top of organizing different farmers markets, we’re also hoping to start establishing larger infrastructure for getting not only different vendors into ghost kitchens (a commercial kitchen that operates solely for delivery), but also in setting up a small-scale, basically local transportation hub infrastructure.”

One of the challenges KMA aims to address is logistics.

“So, our big goal, and the big thing we as vendors have started to notice,” Osborn said, “is that many of us have more than one job when we do these farmers markets. Our focus is on production, but what happens with a lot of us is the time and energy to go to the market, gets to get our goods to different grocery stores, is cumbersome.”

In addition to organizing farmers markets, KMA is looking to create a way for the different markets to to pool their advertising resources, like the collaborations between Chassell and the new Hancock Tori. “But we’re also collaborating with, let’s say, the new restaurant, Shiba Cafe, in the old Finlandia Hall,” said Osborn. “They have walk-in fridge and freezer space. So, what we’re going to do is host that location for farmers and other vendors to bring their goods, and then eventually we’re going to coordinate a box truck that will take those kids to different wholesale markets like grocery stores in Lake Linden.”

In short, among KMA’s goal is to create a distribution hub for vendors across the area.

“We have farmers in Pelkie who don’t have the time or infrastructure to deliver things regularly to Lake Linden,” said Osborn.