Iowa Food Hub Network

The project aims to reduce the overall transportation and warehousing costs for four food hubs and several producers in the state of Iowa through establishing horizontal collaboration between them. The collaboration started in 2014, with 3 food hubs and 1 producer, and has since grown to a complex network as shown in the below graphic. This growing network is experiencing sub-optimal system-wide logistics issues due to the absence of adequate infrastructures, both physical and informational. The research team was tasked to develop an inventory tracking system and develop a mechanism to fairly allocate transportation and warehousing costs between the food hubs. Detailed description of the project can be downloaded by clicking here. The current status of the Iowa Food Hub Network as well as information on the ongoing work can be viewed on the Project 2.0 tab.

The Iowa Food Hub Network 

The below graphic shows the current state of the collaboration. The four food hubs are Iowa Food Hub, Iowa Valley Food Coop, FarmTable Delivery, and Iowa Food Coop. The producers have circles that correspond to the food hub that they sell to. As shown with the blue arrows, FarmTable Delivery truck handles majority of the transportation between the four food hubs and various producers throughout Iowa. Small numbers above the trucking routes indicate sequence of product movement in a given selling cycle

The Problem

Below are comments from the food hub managers highlighting some of the current problems in collaboration due to informal cost allocation procedures and inventory tracking methods:

"I know I'm losing money on the transportation. I need to find true cost and figure out who should be paying for it."

                                                                                                             - Participating Food Hub Manager

"I do not receive confirmation upon products arrival, but would expect communication if something had been lost along the way."

                                                                                                             - Participating Food Hub Manager

The Approach

In this project, the research team has developed an inventory tracking system to help the food hub managers sustain this collaboration effort. The tracking system consists of standardized labeling guidelines, a Microsoft-Excel based label-generating platform, and a mobile application. Both the label generator and the mobile application, along with their back-end code, can be viewed and downloaded from the Downloads tab. For more information please refer to the Publications tab or feel free to Contact the research team