Our Impact

The Marketing for All program created by the Center for Crop Diversification (CCD) is designed to provide small and mid-sized farmers, as well as food entrepreneurs, with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace. By offering tailored resources and training, the program aims to enhance participants’ marketing skills, improve market access, and ultimately increase their profitability. This program addresses challenges faced by producers navigating market trends, consumer preferences, and evolving distribution channels.  

Extension Agents and Ag professionals regularly encounter the client question, “I just bought 10 acres—what should I do with it?” The CCD has developed a tool to support these Ag professionals and their clients in answering that question. The Hort BizQuiz is a short interactive decision tool growers can use to identify their operational strengths and weaknesses in a few key categories: land access, labor access, and available capital. Growers can then work with their Extension agent and other technical assistance providers to choose crops and markets that they should explore further. 

The CCD’s work to expand the growth of and access to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) enterprises across Kentucky and nationally in the form of research, event coordination, and peer support has resulted in innovative programming and grower support. CSA as a direct-to-consumer model has dramatically changed over the last several decades. Throughout these changes, the Center for Crop Diversifications has led research projects and training programs to support the needs of farmers providing CSA shares.

The CCD website serves as the primary hub for all of the resources we develop through multi-disciplinary and regional collaboration. From Price Reports to Budgets to Decision Aids and publications, producers in Kentucky and across the Southeast have come to rely on the Center's website as a trusted source of relevant information.