Dr. Ashton Potter’s work leading The Food Connection within the past three years has threaded together Kentucky farmers, food businesses, and the campus community into a tapestry of economic opportunities, environmental responsibility, and social equitability built from local solutions. Since taking over as Executive Director in 2022, Dr. Potter leveraged her expertise and experience to build up and build out The Food Connection through consistent, strategic development and furthered UK’s mission as a land grant institution through collaboration and service.
Dr. Potter is the creator of the Kentucky Value Chain Collaborative, a national model for relationship building across local food value chains which connects Kentucky farm and food businesses to buyers. After designing the program upon her arrival at UK, she successfully navigated the funding of three place-based Value Chain Coordinators (VCC) in Western, Central and Eastern Cooperative Extension districts. Since the program began in 2023, the VCC program has reached 140+ farms in 50+ counties and generated over $2M in new farm sales. Similarly, Dr. Potter has overseen the expansion of the Cultivate Kentucky Partnership, an on-farm technical assistance program to help produce growers navigate produce safety certifications and access new markets.
It is not coincidental that Dr. Potter’s deep knowledge of local food markets, farmers, and food businesses has coincided with local food procurement efforts by UK Dining that are well beyond key performance indicators. Dr. Potter is a key University stakeholder within the public-private partnership between UK Dining and University of Kentucky, helping increase UK Dining’s Kentucky Farm and Food Business Impact (KYFBBI) procurement to 43% for their yearly spend, more than double the contractual commitment and the second year in a row KYFBBI purchase surpassed 20%.
This success is a result of Dr. Potter’s dedication to forging trust between and within local food systems to create transparent and equitable food chains. Her collaboration with farmers, producers, extension offices, and consumers to create stable markets and opportunities has resulted in more resilient partnerships and operations while also integrating sustainability into the University’s year-round operations. Dr. Potter’s work and leadership at The Food Connection over the past three years has elevated the University towards its land-grant mission, modeled environmental excellence, one of the guiding principles of UK’s Sustainability Strategic Plan, and further established the University of Kentucky as a national leader in sustainability and farm-to-institution initiatives.
- Ryan Lark, Zero-Waste Specialist