MANHATTAN, KS — In 1948, Britt’s Farm Market was established on a long stretch of Kansas Highway 18 connecting this college town, Manhattan, with nearby Ft. Riley, KS.

The fruit and vegetable operation has always been a well-known local landmark.

Over the years, the farm expanded to 400 acres of rich Kansas River bottomland, nestled between Kansas’ scenic Flint Hills.

As often happens when economic progress collides with agriculture, the farming side can literally be bulldozed.

In July, a feasibility study will be released on establishing a regional food hub in Kansas City.

The Greater Kansas City Food Policy Coalition website reports that last summer the Kansas City Food Hub Working Group received funding from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City and the Kansas Health Foundation to study local food hub feasibility. It is a year-long study.

Scott Danner, the COO of Liberty Fruit Co., Inc., in Kansas City, KS, said his firm is supportive of the effort.

A number of interesting developments are occurring in Kansas City’s food trade, according to David Haun, president of Haun Potato Co., located in suburban Shawnee Mission, KS.

In the restaurant business, “We continue to see increased chain restaurants in that sector. There are less and less Ma and Pa type restaurants.”

On the retail side, “We are seeing a definite increase in groceries going into the organic business.”

These may be strictly organic stores or mainstream stores that “are aware of the competition and carry more organics themselves.”

MANHATTAN, KS — The produce industry has a lot of good stories on how people got started in the business, but it’s hard to beat Terry (Edmonds) Olson’s tale from the mid-1960s.

Olson’s father was passionate for produce when he wasn’t teaching plant pathology at Kansas State University, located here. Dr. Leon Edmonds also had to feed a wife, Pat, and nine children. So converting the children to be profit centers was not only a practical matter but also good business training for the kids.

KANSAS CITY — In Kansas City’s wholesale produce business, “Liberty, C&C are dominant and doing a good job,” noted Jimmy Connell, a family owner of Keith Connell, Inc. “The three of them have all the business” within the metropolitan area’s produce trade, referring to Liberty Fruit Co., Inc., in Kansas City, KS, and C&C Produce, Inc. in North Kansas City.

Six days after the Feb. 5 passage of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Emergency Water Delivery Act by the U.S. House of Representatives, California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein introduced in the Senate a bill called the California Emergency Drought Relief Act of 2014, with a very different vision for addressing California's severe water shortage.