Oklahoma State University
IN-26: Innovation C

The Robert M. Kerr Food & Agriculture Products Center (FAPC), which falls under the OSU Division of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, is a research facility that helps develop successful value-added enterprises in Oklahoma - to bring the products, the jobs, and the dollars back home. FAPC staff collaborate with Made in Oklahoma companies on a daily basis to help local businesses enter the market. By offering large and small businesses, producers and entrepreneurs access to faculty and staff with expertise in business and technical disciplines, FAPC strives to discover, develop and deliver information that will stimulate and support the growth of value-added food and agricultural products and processing in Oklahoma. As a result of FAPC's work, OSU University Dining Services (UDS) benefits from the connections to local producers to purchase even more locally grown or produced food and beverage as evidenced by steady growth since first collaborating with FAPC in 2009: • In 2016, 37 Made In Oklahoma (MIO) companies provided food products to University Dining Services (UDS) and directly employed 8,497 Oklahomans. • Purchases of MIO products by OSU’s UDS have increased by 353%, an average of 29% growth each year, since 2009. • Sales by MIO companies to UDS averaged about $13,600 in 2009 and about $25,700 in 2016, or an 89% increase. Over the seven-year span, the annual increase in average sales per company to UDS was 20%. • In 2016, UDS purchased an estimated $617,531 of food products from MIO companies. Because these companies and their employees spend money in the state, the indirect and induced impacts of these sales generated an additional $1.4 million in economic activity across Oklahoma, mostly in rural and under-served areas. FAPC opened for business in early 1997, and the 96,000-square-foot stand-alone building houses animal harvesting, food manufacturing, grain milling, sensory profiling, food microbiology and analytical laboratory facilities, as well as conference facilities and applications laboratories for demonstration and prototype testing. FAPC has assisted more than 1,000 Oklahoma clients through 3,000 technical and business projects. FAPC's focus on Oklahoma producers and processors benefits OSU's UDS ability to source so many local foods.

Andrea Graves, FAPC