Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship awarded 26 Choose Iowa Value-Added Grants to Iowa farmers, small businesses and nonprofits in 22 counties totaling $463,000 on Wednesday. 

The Choose Iowa announcement was made as part of Iowa Ag Week during an event at Cortum Farm and Co. in Indianola, which was one of the 2024 grant awardees. In addition to Cortum Farm and Co., Honey Hollow Apiary and Gardens LLC in Indianola was also a recipient of a Choose Iowa Value-Added Grant. 

The $25,000 dollar grant for Cortum Farm and Co. will help renovate the family farm’s historic barn. Honey Hollow Apiary and Gardens received a grant of $8,473 dollars, which will be used to help scale up production by improving honey harvesting with commercial extraction equipment. The Choose Iowa grants were launched in 2022, and Secretary Naig says that the recipients are helping build a brand of quality products for consumers.

“First of all, it’s all about creating a solid brand and qualifying products for it. We want to make sure that when you see a Choose Iowa logo, when you go to chooseiowa.com, and you see a vendor that’s a participant or a member of Choose Iowa, that you can be assured that that is a product that is in fact from Iowa. It’s raised in Iowa, made here, grown here and it meets our standards, it’s high quality, and it’s everything that you want it to be and you’ve got to adhere to great brand standards.”

Hear more from Mike Naig on an upcoming Let’s Talk Indianola.