What is the missing middle in food systems?

The missing middle refers to the loss of small and mid-scale processors, distributors, and food hubs that connect farmers to consumers. Without them, farmers rely on corporate buyers and consumers lose access to affordable, local options.

Why is rebuilding the missing middle important?

Rebuilding the missing middle in food systems strengthens resilience, supports farmers, and creates local jobs. It shortens supply chains, increases community sovereignty, and reduces vulnerability to global shocks.

What are examples of rebuilding the missing middle?

Examples include the Market Center of the Ozarks food hub in the U.S., France’s short food supply chains, and Italy’s Parma farmers’ market. In Kenya, local millers and packers provide critical rural jobs despite underinvestment.

How can communities support the missing middle?

Communities can support the missing middle by investing in shared infrastructure like cold storage, encouraging schools and hospitals to buy local, backing year-round food hubs, and teaching food literacy in schools.

Rebuilding the Missing Middle in Food Systems Today

By Leni Spooner, creator of Between the Lines.

I first noticed the problem while researching food policy in Canada. Our shelves were full, our farms were productive, and yet something essential had disappeared: the middle layer of the food system. Small and mid-scale processors, millers, abattoirs, regional distributors — all the infrastructure that once connected farms to communities. This is what experts now call the missing middle in food systems, and rebuilding it is critical for resilience and sovereignty.

Instead of flowing through regional hubs, Canadian food now often takes a long detour: raw wheat shipped to the United States, processed into pasta, and then re-imported. Prairie cattle traveling hundreds of kilometres to mega-plants before beef comes back to the local grocery store. The result is an hourglass food system: farms at the bottom, giant retailers at the top, and almost nothing in between.

The more I studied this “missing middle” in Canada, the more I realized it wasn’t just a Canadian story. It’s a global one.

What We Mean by the “Missing Middle”

Every food system rests on three pillars: producers, processors, and retailers. When the middle is hollowed out, farmers have only one path — sell into corporate supply chains. Consumers, meanwhile, face less choice, higher prices, and weaker connections to the people who grow their food.

The missing middle isn’t nostalgia for mom-and-pop shops. It’s about resilience. Mid-scale processors and distributors are what allow local food to reach schools, hospitals, and municipal markets. They create jobs, shorten supply chains, and give communities a buffer against global shocks. Without them, a handful of multinational companies decide what ends up on our plates.

How It Looks in Different Places

Canada: A Stark Example

Decades of policy retreat and corporate consolidation hollowed out Canada’s regional processors. Grain, cattle, and produce move through globalized channels, while imports of processed foods climb. Municipalities and consumers are left with little power to source locally at scale.

United States: Pandemic Lessons and Local Solutions

In the U.S., the closure of small slaughterhouses and dairies left farmers dependent on industrial giants. When COVID-19 outbreaks shut down a few mega-plants, grocery shelves went bare. At the same time, farmers’ markets, CSAs, and community food hubs flourished — proof that resilient middle layers still matter.

Some communities are rebuilding the middle deliberately:

Market Center of the Ozarks in Arkansas recently opened a 45,000 sq. ft. food hub with shared kitchens, cold storage, and processing space. It links farmers to schools, hospitals, and local businesses while partnering with food banks to redistribute surplus.
On the Hopi reservation in Arizona, the Hopi Food Hub is turning an old garage into a space for processing, kitchens, and greenhouses — an Indigenous-led model of food sovereignty blending cultural resilience with infrastructure.
In Oakland, California, the Saba Grocers Initiative bulk-buys produce, divides cases into smaller lots, and supplies corner stores. Funded by soda-tax revenue, it transforms small shops into neighborhood hubs for fresh food.

European Union: Short Chains as Policy

Europe frames the issue differently but wrestles with the same reality. The EU and its member states now explicitly promote short food supply chains — farmers’ markets, co-ops, and regional hubs that link producers to consumers with no more than one intermediary. France has even written these into law.

Examples illustrate how this works:

MercaTiAmo Market in Parma, Italy reinvests farmers’ earnings locally, generating measurable multiplier effects for the regional economy.
Case studies across Austria, France, and Hungary show that legal support for short supply chains builds trust, sustains rural economies, and reduces vulnerability to global price swings.

Global South: Midstream as a Job Engine

In many countries of the Global South, the “middle” isn’t missing so much as undervalued. Local mills, packers, and distributors often generate the majority of rural non-farm jobs and capture much of the value added to food. Yet these enterprises are chronically underfunded, leaving farmers locked out of stable markets and communities exposed to volatility.

Shared Consequences of a Hollow Middle

Whether in Saskatchewan, Iowa, Brittany, or Kenya, the results look familiar:

Fragile supply chains. When midstream links vanish, a single plant closure or shipping disruption can leave whole regions without access to food.
Economic hollowing. Farmers lose bargaining power, local jobs disappear, and wealth flows outward to corporate headquarters.
Social disconnection. Without regional infrastructure, people lose their sense of connection to food. Food literacy fades, and communities feel powerless in shaping their own systems.

The missing middle is not just about farming. It’s about sovereignty, resilience, and community dignity.

The Jobs We Forgot to Count

Yet the missing middle isn’t only a story of loss. Rebuilding it could be a job engine for smaller cities and regional towns.

Mid-scale processing plants, food hubs, and distributors are labour-intensive. They create steady employment close to home — not just for farmers but for drivers, warehouse staff, technicians, food safety workers, marketers, and administrators. They provide accessible entry-level positions for young people and students, as well as skilled roles for trades and professionals.

When regional processing is strong, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) spring up around it: packaging firms, equipment suppliers, logistics providers, even agri-tech start-ups. And because mid-sized processors operate at a scale larger than a farm but smaller than a multinational, they are often the most agile in reaching export-ready growth.

This isn’t just theory:

In Arkansas, the Ozarks food hub is already creating dozens of jobs while strengthening local farmers.
In Oakland, corner stores transformed into fresh food hubs employ and train local youth.
In Parma, Italy, reinvested earnings ripple outward, sustaining entire regional economies.

A strong middle doesn’t just feed resilience — it feeds employment, entrepreneurship, and upward mobility.

Indoor community food hub with vendors, families, and students, symbolizing how markets and co-ops strengthen the missing middle. — Community food hubs bring the missing middle to life — connecting farms to families, training youth, and supporting small enterprises. (AI-generated image)

Change Starts Locally

The crucial lesson is this: rebuilding the missing middle rarely begins in national capitals. Real change starts with municipalities, school boards, and regional councils. These are the bodies that decide where to buy food, whether to invest in shared cold storage, or how to zone for local markets.

Once local initiatives show results, national governments — and in Europe, even Brussels — are pulled in. Policy follows practice, not the other way around.

This bottom-up pattern holds across borders:

In the U.S., food hubs and local procurement policies emerged before USDA support.
In Europe, it’s towns and regions that make short food supply chains a reality on the ground.
In the Global South, co-ops and community logistics networks often fill gaps long before national programs recognize them.

The missing middle will not be rebuilt by decree. It will be rebuilt community by community, until national systems can no longer ignore the momentum.

What Communities Can Do

Practical steps look different in each place, but the themes are universal:

Invest in shared infrastructure. Small processing plants, cold storage, and distribution hubs help local food scale.
Leverage institutional buyers. Schools, hospitals, and municipal governments can anchor demand by sourcing locally.
Support markets and hubs. Beyond farmers’ markets, towns can back year-round food hubs that aggregate and distribute.
Restore food literacy. Teaching young people where food comes from makes them lifelong allies of resilient systems.

These steps may sound modest, but together they rebuild the connective tissue of food systems — the part that makes everything else possible.

A Global Invitation

I began by tracing the missing middle in Canada, where the problem felt especially stark. But the more I learned, the more obvious it became that this is a shared challenge.

Wherever you live, you can probably name a farmer who struggles to find a fair market, a school that buys imported food instead of local, or a community hub that could do more with better support. The missing middle is visible everywhere once you know how to look.

The question is whether we choose to rebuild the missing middle in food systems — town by town, region by region — until national systems catch up.

Because in the end, the missing middle is where resilience lives.

Glossary

Food Hub: A centrally located facility that aggregates, stores, processes, and distributes locally or regionally produced food.
Short Food Supply Chain (SFSC): A system where products move from farmer to consumer with zero or one intermediary.
SME (Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise): Businesses that employ fewer than 500 people (Canada/US context), often forming the backbone of regional economies.
Midstream: The “middle” of food systems — processing, packaging, logistics, and distribution infrastructure.

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About the Author

Leni Spooner is a Canadian writer, researcher, and civic storyteller. She is the founder of Between the Lines, a publication focused on the quiet forces shaping politics, infrastructure, and public life. Her work blends historical context with present-day analysis, helping readers see the deeper patterns that shape national decisions.

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Rebuilding the Missing Middle in Food Systems: Community-First Infrastructure for Resilience and Jobs