Grow. Eat. Play. was a regional campaign designed to connect consumers with local farms and food businesses across North Iowa. Funded through a USDA Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) grant, the project combined storytelling, education, and digital tools to help people discover, cook with, and support locally produced food.
As Creative Director for the campaign, I led branding, content strategy, and digital development. The work included producing educational materials, managing digital media and storytelling, and building tools that made it easier for consumers to find and purchase local food.
One of the most innovative components of the campaign was the interactive recipe platform, which connected home cooks directly with local producers. Through a custom integration with MarketMaker, a national directory of farm and food businesses, users could click on ingredients within a recipe to find local farms and food businesses that produced them.
The project, titled Click to Connect: Linking Recipes and Farms, received the 2025 Farm Credit MarketMaker Innovation Award, making it the first Iowa-based project to win the national honor. I accepted the award on behalf of Healthy Harvest of North Iowa at the National Agricultural Marketing Summit in Indianapolis.
Over the course of the project, the recipe platform generated more than 24,000 visits, demonstrating strong public interest in Iowa-grown ingredients while creating a direct pathway for consumers to support local farms.
Following the conclusion of the campaign, I also authored a white paper documenting the project’s approach and lessons learned, exploring how storytelling, digital infrastructure, and regional collaboration can strengthen local food systems.
👉 Read the white paper: Regional Storytelling as Food System Infrastructure