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LionBerry’s Weekly Delusion & Re-Illusion Update Lion’s Mane Mushroom Powder in Your Coffee Isn’t Lifting Your Brain Fog. Welcome to Health Food Washing 101: Where Marketing Is the Science and the Label Is the Proof. If It’s on the Label, It Must Be True??? THE BOTTOM LINE — FOR THOSE WHO DON’T READ THE WHOLE […]
Valentines DayMOST BEATIFUL AWE INSPIRING VENUERICH IN KC HISTORY
@lionberrytt #elderberry #soilhealth #regenerativefarming #landmanagement #kansasfarmer ♬ original sound – Lionberry
Heartland Elderberry Collaborative (Heartland ECo) “Instead of asking each farm to grow bigger, we’re building shared capacity so farms can stay viable at their current scale while accessing value-added markets.” An AgriCluster Pilot for Shared Infrastructure and Value-Added Market AccessEastern Kansas / Western Missouri PROBLEM CONTEXT Small and mid-sized farms face persistent structural barriers to […]
When it comes to sports performance, recovery isn’t optional — it’s essential. That belief is shared by John Cantrell, a heavyweight boxer known for his discipline, power, and commitment to training smart. That commitment is why John has chosen LIONBERRY as part of his routine. Built for Sports — Not Just the Game, But the […]
We make two products with elderberry: LionBerry Regenerative Hydration and Elderberry Sips. Neither one is a syrup. Syrup is fine for pancakes. Thicker is not better. For elderberry — as food, as medicine, for maximum benefit — drop the pH, pasteurize fast, protect plant properties, no powders. Long, slow steeping in heat — like simmering […]
TOPEKA (KTMJ) – Fox 43 AM Live’s Dane Kroll & John Cantrell chat with Bevin Brooks about Lionberry and what you can find at her booth while shopping at the Holiday Fling, December 13th & 14th, at the Stormont Vail Events Center. Click to watch our TV interview on KSNT
The phrase “food is medicine” has become the wellness world’s version of “thoughts and prayers.” Everyone says it. Everyone feels good saying it. And almost nobody means anything real when they do. That’s the danger—not the phrase itself, but what happens when language gets stretched so far it stops pointing to anything true. The original […]
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Lionberry is always looking for the purple win! Thank you, Congresswoman Sharice Davids for taking the time to meet with Kansas farmers and help us to promote sustainability and infrastructure through your Local Grocery Initiative.
“Instead of asking each farm to grow bigger, we’re building shared capacity so farms can stay viable at their current scale while accessing value-added markets.”
An AgriCluster Pilot for Shared Infrastructure and Value-Added Market Access
Eastern Kansas / Western Missouri
Small and mid-sized farms face persistent structural barriers to entering value-added markets, including:
• Limited access to processing infrastructure
• Limited cold storage capacity
• Transportation constraints
• Fragmented, uncoordinated distribution
• High costs from duplicating equipment and logistics across individual farms
These constraints restrict grower profitability, inhibit vertical integration, and reduce the viability of diversified regional food systems.
The Heartland Elderberry Collaborative (Heartland ECo) is an active, facilitated, place-based AgriCluster pilot organizing elderberry growers and processors in eastern Kansas and western Missouri.
• Facilitated through ACRE (AgriCluster Resilience and Expansion)
• Emphasizes collective capacity-building and shared infrastructure
• Designed to enable farm-level vertical integration (grow, process, and take products to market)
• Structured to share infrastructure, governance, and market access
• Not a single-farm expansion program
• Not a commodity-scale production model
• Not a vertically integrated corporate system
• Performs well on marginal soils
• Integrates with soil-health and regenerative practices
• Supports perennial hedgerows and diversified systems
• Enables multiple value-added pathways (destemming, juicing, beverage and supplement production)
• Aligns with growing consumer demand for regionally produced products
The pilot is explicitly designed to test repeatability across additional non–Big Ag crops, including tomatoes, fruit crops, and legumes.
• Core grower group established
• Regular coordination underway
• Shared infrastructure priorities identified
• Grower recruitment initiated
• Early coordination with grocery buyers in progress
The Heartland ECo model proposes a centralized hub facility located south of Kansas City to support participating farms and processors.
• Aggregation and intake
• Cold storage
• Destemming
• Juicing
• Bottling
• Short-haul regional distribution
The hub is intended to reduce duplicated equipment costs, logistical inefficiencies, and fragmented distribution efforts that commonly limit small-farm participation in value-added markets.
Establish a functioning elderberry AgriCluster
Create shared access to processing, storage, and distribution infrastructure
Build collective grant-writing and fundraising capacity
Coordinate educational outreach related to elderberry and soil-health practices
Evaluate feasibility of scaling the model across additional crops and regions
This poster outlines a proposal for a forthcoming pilot study to formally evaluate the effectiveness of the Heartland ECo model.
• Economic impact
• Grower profitability
• Infrastructure utilization
• Soil-health indicators
• Logistical efficiency
• Replicability across crops and regions
