Choose Iowa is a program within the Iowa Department of Agriculture (IDALS) to identify and promote food, beverages, and ag products that are from Iowa. During the most recent legislative cycle, the program was given a directive to expand promotional efforts to include horticulture and fiber goods from Iowa. Previously, the program only focused on food and beverages. As these expansions roll out, there is a need for focus groups held around these topics since horticulture and fiber goods are such a vast field and so different from food and beverages. The thought would be that we would hold two types of focus groups “Growers/Producers” and “Customers.” For Producers, we would like to learn what they see as the strengths/challenges of producing and selling their particular products in Iowa, and how we could best serve them. Since horticulture is such a broad umbrella, there may be a need to divide this out into several groups (i.e. greenhouses, flower farms, Christmas tree farms, etc.) From Customers, we would like to learn what they look for when it comes to flowers, plants, Christmas trees, etc. that are from Iowa. We also would like to understand what consumers find valuable, and their willingness to purchase horticulture products specifically from Iowa. One of the goals of these focus groups is to be able to define criteria for identifying horticulture products from Iowa.
