"Farm-to-Institution: Next Steps in Supporting Local Food Infrastructure"

If you want regional food systems to work you have to include professionally certified small-batch food processing at a regional scale. 

Good new article:  "Fruit gives way to jam, tomatoes become sauce, vegetables are pickled, relished and frozen. Seasonality, and our responses to it, may be the single most defining characteristic of local food. And, methods of processing, preserving and adding value are emerging as an important part of the opportunity and challenge"

"Build Infrastructure and Develop Networks: In order to sell to institutions, farmers need to address product availability, seasonality, quality, and consistency, as well as the sales, distribution, processing and handling needs of institutions. U.S. food infrastructure is better equipped to deal with larger farms and longer supply chains. So, smaller farms aimed at localized sales often do not have the ability to wash, chop, pack or freeze their products in order to accommodate institutional demands."

Regional systems need support networks and year-round sales to succeed.

From Farm to institution:  Next Steps in Supporting Local Food Infrastructure. At HuffingtonPost.com  10/25/13 

Thanks to Michael Hoadley at FEWZION for the link.

Tomatoes are 'Sweet Olive' that we grew along with 'Sungolds' in our garden this year.  Both great producers.