field notes: news & resources for re-linking the food chain

We were so pleased this morning to see this excellent article on Detroit Eastern Market published on the homepage of MetroMode.com. Eastern Market “is the most comprehensive food hub in the nation” according to its president, Dan Carmody. Understanding their methods and learning from their model could significantly increase the amount of regional food hubs in our nation – creating jobs, improving the health of our communities, and growing the small farm sector in an unprecedented way.

Dan Carmody, president of Eastern Market

We’ve excerpted a few of our favorite quotes from the article, especially the piece that shares how we are aiding in Eastern Market’s efforts, but please make sure to read the full story here.

{The food hub helps small farmers grow the size and yield of their farms and create other viable sales outlets that aren’t community supportive agriculture (CSA), a farmer’s market, or direct sales to restaurants because “farmers have to balance their time between selling food and growing it,” Carmody says. “It’s the next step in the devolution of a food system into a stronger regional system, encouraging smaller growers.”}

{Carmody and his staff have increased the profile of local and regional growers supplying the market, says Debbie Tropp, branch chief of the Agricultural Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is conducting a two-year study of Eastern Market. “They’re doing their level best to try to revitalize the regional food system in a way that may not have happened prior.”

Eastern Market is considered a “hybrid market,” where wholesale and retail activities occur, one of about 50 in the nation, according to James Barham, agricultural economist and head of a USDA interagency task force on regional food hubs. “Hardly any of these would be classified regional food hubs. Mainly, it’s a property manager who’s leasing space…. What Dan is doing is pretty remarkable. He could have set up as a property manager and leased space. Eastern Market would have continued to exist.”

Food hubs are a fairly new designation for comprehensive agricultural centers that provide a catalytic impact on the regional food system, says Barham. “Because of the strong relationship regional food hubs have with producers, and because of the demand for locally grown product, producers are scaling up their operations, they’re hiring more staff, they’re planting more crops, they’re switching practices from more conventional to more sustainably produced because there’s higher customer demand for that type of product.”

Eastern Market has established a virtual food hub to connect the region’s growers and buyers in an unprecedented way using Local Orb.it. “The buyer can go online and pick Eastern Market as their hub, see a variety of our growers, our specialty product vendors, and be able to order from these different types of growers on one purchase order,” says Christine Quane, wholesale market coordinator for Eastern Market. “That allows growers to tell their story, inventory their items and put their wholesale pricing [on display]. They pick their products, make their orders, and the two meet on a set day — saving time for both. By knowing the story behind the grower, they know where their food is coming from. They’ll know who the growers are and how they grow.”}

Read the full story here.

Meet Mike

Mike Thorn believes in change.  He believes that small farmers can build sustainable businesses. He believes that restaurants and institutions will one day be able to source local food with ease.  And he believes it’s time for high-tech solutions to support the vibrant, local businesses that are bringing good food to our tables.

Mike joined Local Orbit as the lead programmer in May, and he hasn’t come up for air since.  From developing new features for our pilot hub sites to figuring out how to solve problems created by rural satellite internet connections, he’s been busy.  Mike’s work on our upcoming release will allow us to tailor Local Orbit’s tools to each region’s unique needs and support a variety of food distribution business models.  It will also provide rich production and distribution information to help everyone involved in the value chain with future planning.

Mike’s food values come from his deep family roots.  His father, a professor and doctor, cooked dinner for his family every night, inspired by the foods of his Thai and Chinese upbringing.  Local produce was always on the menu and still is today; he purchases at least 50% of his food from Farmer’s Markets and blows away dinner guests with his unbelievable lamb curry that takes 10 hours of hands on cooking to perfect.

Mike was majoring in Chemistry at Eastern Michigan University, but chose to jump into the fast and furious world of internet startups instead. Soon after, his first startup consulting company was awarded a major project for The Dow Chemical Company, lasting 9 years.  Mike’s role in this project was the primary software architect for their laboratory information management system.  His software was used to outsource millions of dollars of routine testing, enabling shorter hold times on inventory and freeing expensive internal resources to focus on product development and refinement.  Later, he helped implement a web-based data mining processor that used natural language processing to calculate performance metrics for Fortune 500 companies such as Disney and RCI.  Most recently, he designed a HIPPA-compliant architecture for an electronic medical record system start-up, Therapy Charts

Mike is excited to see his work help farmers grow stronger businesses.  In the long run, he sees himself making an even greater contribution by helping our users run their businesses more effectively with the robust, easy-to-use planning and marketing tools Local Orbit is developing.   His goal is to bring the resources and tools that create advantages for big agriculture and huge retail chains to 10-acre farms and 10-table restaurants alike.

Meet Julie

Julie Mills brings over three decades of computer science and technology experience to the Local Orbit Team as our Chief Technology Officer.  At just six years old, her tech interest was sparked when she began learning to program computer games in a pilot program at Oakbrook Elementary School in Sterling Heights, MI. The sense of drive and knack for technological problem-solving that started at such a young age carried Julie to the CIA, where she developed web protocols and search systems, on to Kmart, where she led the massive transition from mainframes to PCs, and then onward to Sega and Catapult, where she developed game systems.

She also developed web sites for kids before moving to AOL. In her fourteen years with AOL, she managed international product launches in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Beijing, led oversight of broadband operations, and eventually became Director of IT Governance, Risk, and Compliance.

Julie with her two children, Kennedy and Parker

Julie was living in the D.C. area when a friend introduced her to the MichAGAIN campaign created by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to promote the state’s technology and start-up opportunities to former Michiganders.  Local Orbit’s CTO job posting was the first thing she saw when she joined the MichAGAIN group on LinkedIn.

Julie and her two young children now reside in her hometown near Detroit, MI.  “It’s funny,” she says. “Michigan isn’t Silicon Valley but there is a combination of technological know-how and a willingness to innovate here. Coupled with a wealth of family-run farms and entrepreneurial spirit, it’s an exciting place to be.”

Julie has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Detroit and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. We’re excited to welcome her to Local Orbit, where she’ll play a major role in developing the first online software service to solve the problems of easy access to locally produced food.

If you’ve been keeping up with our blog or the travels of our founder, Erika Block, you probably know a little bit about Poptech. For the uninitiated, here’s a quick rundown: Each year Poptech gathers together a class of Social Innovation Fellows from around the world. Although they all come from vastly different backgrounds, the common denominator that the fellows share is the ability to build social ventures that have the potential to create significant change. Each sees a problem that’s large in scope, and is inspired to find the pressure points within systems that could turn their particular challenge into an opportunity.

In this spirit of innovation, Poptech fellows and other interested folks convene, talk and get down to work. During the annual Poptech conference in Maine, each fellow has the opportunity to articulate just why they find their chosen problem and solution so compelling.

Watch, listen and learn as Erika walks through how Local Orbit can leverage technology to change our food system, solving problems for farmers, chefs and food service purchasers — ultimately leading us to a system where more food is sourced locally. Local Orbit’s platform offers tools for people to source a greater percentage of their food through local and regional producers – and the impact that ripples outward, well beyond the food chain. It promotes healthier communities — physically, environmentally, and economically.

Get a glimpse of all of PopTech’s social innovation fellows in this quick clip.

After her talk last month at the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine, Brian Merchant of TreeHugger sat down with our founder, Erika Block, to discuss Local Orbit.  Brian mused on the fact that folks might not associate “new technologies with organic or local farming,” but ultimately, the convergence of the two offers exciting possibilities for changing the food system.

Grab a cup of joe and sit back for four minutes and forty-nine seconds as Erika and Brian walk through how Local Orbit’s technology “amplifies the impact and efficiency of old-school local food relationships and networks,” enabling farmers and food producers to scale up and organizations to source food locally easily.

Though they may be 2,300 miles apart, Mariah Cherem and Ragan Erickson, consider each other soul sisters because of their combined passions for food and technology, and their conviction that the right tech can help solve challenges within local food systems.  On board with Local Orbit as Community Managers since the end of August, these two up and coming local food activists bring a strong sense of drive and diverse skill sets to Local Orbit in hope of making food easy to find, easy to buy and easy to trace through a shorter food chain.

Ragan and her youngest daughter, Brooke

Mariah and her dog, Sparky

keep reading

From the PopTech Announcement:
This year’s Fellows are spearheading a compelling set of solutions to global challenges. They are reconnecting refugee families, helping people become “makers” of their own technology, improving local food production and distribution, and getting to the heart of measuring true impact. They are helping girls access education and healthcare, building community through music and architecture, and using a combination of high-tech and good business to get clean water, sustainable energy and appropriate medical devices to those who most need them.

Very cool infographic from 1 Block Off the Grid.

(via Mark Bittman’s weekly New York Times food roundup.)

As Local Orbit’s Community Liaison, I started buying from the Frankfort Farmer’s Market through Local Orbit to understand firsthand what our customers experience. It helps to practice what I preach, right? Using our own tools has in fact helped us take our customer’s perspectives in developing this innovative approach to local food-buying.

Besides, at what other job is grocery shopping considered an acceptable use of your time?

But now that I’ve been using it for a few months, I’ve noticed how it’s changed the way I buy food.

Guaranteed Availability
There are a few items at the farmers market that have become favorites, things that are often sold out or missed when I’m not the very first one there (which would be never). By ordering online the sellers reserve it for me and, voila, no disappointments or surprises.

Saves Money
Since I shop at the grocery store midweek, I can shop from my local farmer’s market at the same time that I’m making my grocery list. The extra planning helps me stick to a budget while keeping our pantry filled for our family of five with as much local product as possible. No impulse spending!

More Variety
But what really surprised me is the variety that our vendors list online. Let’s face it: some vendors have better displays than others. Or meat and other perishables are packed in coolers and it’s hard to tell what’s available. But with Local Orbit, it’s all out there to see. And some vendors list online but don’t attend the market, so ordering online is the only way to get it in our area. That’s the way it is with my lettuce, and now I’m such a fan of his stuff that it’s painful to run out and buy anything else.

I still enjoy shopping at our farmer’s market and visiting with the vendors that have become friends over the last few months. I usually find one or two things that I didn’t buy online. And my kids love to spend a couple of their dollars getting snacks. I get to enjoy the farmers market and feel good about supporting my local economy, but collecting my food is much simpler – especially with three kids in tow.

Local Orbit team members Becky Noffsinger and Patty Cantrell attended the Farm Routes to Prosperity Summit in Traverse City last month and I just had an opportunity to read Diane Connor’s report of the event.  The region is well on its way to achieving its 10-year goal of  increasing the resilience and doubling the value of the region’s local food and agricultural economy by 2019. With two recently-launched Local Orbit marketplaces in Benzie County, we’re please to provide the online infrastructure to help make this happen.  We’re particularly excited by Rob Sirrine’s map of farm-to-school growth in the past six years.  More please!

When Rob Sirrine, chairman of the Northwest Michigan Food & Farming Network, clicked on his favorite slide during his presentation to the third annual Farm Routes to Prosperity Summit, the audience responded with an appreciative “oooh!”

More than 100 people were there on Feb. 4, gathered in Traverse City to chart and plan for making more progress in the eat-local, buy-local food movement that is slowly but surely changing northwestern Lower Michigan’s farm and food economy.

The region is home to a unique, Lake Michigan-powered microclimate that supports a beautiful landscape of fruit orchards; tourism-related farm stands, wineries and breweries; and nearby fields of vegetables, livestock, and small dairies. Members of the Food & Farming Network—a diverse group of farm, nonprofit, health, community garden, land preservation, business, school, and economic development professionals—want to not just preserve it, but grow it.

Why did Dr. Sirrine’s slide show take their breath away? Because one of this MSU Extension educator’s slides showed a map with just one dot on it, marking the location of Central Grade School in the Traverse City Area Public Schools District. In 2004, that school launched the region’s first “farm to school” program, serving fresh, locally grown produce from area farmers in school lunches.

Read the rest of Diane’s report on the Michigan Land Use Institute’s site.