Content
Shared problems. Shared solutions.
Building a stronger local food system through collaboration.
The Local Foods Collaboration Network brings Nebraska farmers, ranchers, and growers together to explore practical ways to work together, share resources, strengthen markets, and address challenges that are difficult to solve alone.
Why Collaboration?
Why Collaboration?
Nebraska’s local food producers are navigating many of the same challenges: reaching new customers, managing distribution, finding affordable infrastructure, reducing costs, and building sustainable markets.
Our survey showed strong interest in working together through shared marketing, transportation, infrastructure, cooperative sales models, and other creative approaches.
The Local Foods Collaboration Network creates space to move those ideas forward. Through gatherings, resources, and shared learning, we’ll explore both simple and more formal ways producers can work together and ask an important question:
What could become possible if we didn’t have to do everything alone?
Special Thanks to Our Network Supporters
This work is supported by the North Central Extension Risk Management Education Center, project award no. 2025-70027-45398, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Join Us for the 2026 BFBL Local Food Collaboration Summit
November 9, 2026
9:00 AM–2:30 PM
Lancaster County Extension Office
444 Cherrycreek Rd A, Lincoln, NE 68528
About the Summit
Join Nebraska farmers, ranchers, and growers for a day of conversation, learning, and practical exploration around collaboration.
We’ll hear from local producers who have built collaborative ventures, learn about cooperative business models, explore marketing strategies, and spend time working through shared challenges and ideas with other producers.
The goal is not simply to talk about collaboration. It’s to help producers identify where working together could make something more possible, affordable, or sustainable.
Who Should Attend?
Farmers, ranchers, and growers who sell into local markets, whether direct-to-consumer or wholesale.
Service providers are by invitation only.
What Will We Explore?
Practical ways to share resources, reduce costs, and solve shared problems
Collaborative marketing and ways to reach new customers
Cooperative business models and other forms of shared ownership
Multi-farm CSAs, shared sales, distribution, processing, infrastructure, and more
The opportunities and challenges of working together
Ideas and experiences from other Nebraska producers
Potential collaborations you could explore after the summit
Come with a problem. Leave with possibilities.
You don’t need to have a cooperative business idea or a formal collaboration in mind.
Maybe you’re wondering how to reach more customers. Maybe distribution is eating up your time. Maybe you need access to equipment or processing space. Maybe several producers in your area are all trying to solve the same problem.
Bring the question, challenge, or idea you’ve been thinking about. There may be someone else in the room thinking about it, too.
Register Today
Registration is free and includes lunch. Registration is required so we can plan an accurate headcount for lunch. Registration Deadline: November 1, 2026