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.

I had the pleasure of attending the Michigan Organic Food and Farming Conference last weekend and was inspired by the vision and integrity of farmers I met who’ve built successful businesses, as well new farmers who are just starting out.  Highlights included an intergenerational panel that addressed needs and resources for incubating new farmers, a session on creative strategies for farmland acquisition, and a panel about Michigan Thumb Organics (MTO).

MTO is a cooperative of experienced farmers whose individual members sell organic commodities crops like soy and corn.  They’ve come together to expand and diversify sustainable local food production.  Check out Chris Bedford’s video for their story.

If we want an ecologically sound local food system that’s available to everyone, we’ll need to figure out how to reinvest in…lost infrastructure. Small farmers can’t do it on their own. (Tom Philpott)

Philpott is a new farmer who left a career as business writer five years ago.  Newsweek published his recent essay on the relationship between government farm subsidies, the cost of food, and how these funds can be better used to support small farms.

He looks at the consolidation of our food system; the loss of local food processing infrastructure; and the environmental, health and safety costs that have been enabled hundreds of billions of dollars in agriculture subsidies.

read on for excerpts

For all the grumbling you do about your weekly grocery bill, the fact is you’ve never had it so good, at least in terms of what you pay for every calorie you eat.  According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Those savings begin with the remarkable success of one crop: corn…But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs.

via America’s Food Crisis and How to Fix It – TIME

A decades long conversation about the sustainability of our food system has moved from books and blogs and food activist listservs into mainstream media.  Wherever you look there’s an article, a movie, a TV or radio segment about our broken food system, about food safety, about how our eating habits are making us sick.

And about how much organic lettuce the White House Garden is producing.
read on…

There are many reasons we buy local.  It’s a given that we get healthy, fresh, great tasting food – from producers we know and trust.  Equally important is the impact our spending choices have on local economies.

According to the Michigan Department of Agriculture,  if each household in our home state of Michigan started spending $10 per week of their grocery bill on Michigan products, we would keep more than $37 million in Michigan, each week.  That’s almost $2 billion per year.

(Did you know?  Michigan has the second most diverse agricultural output in the country, after California.  It’s also among the top five states in the production of over 30 different types of crops, and ranks first in the production of tart cherries, blueberries, navy beans, cranberry beans, and black turtle beans.  Agriculture is the second largest industry in Michigan and, unlike manufacturing, has shown steady growth through the recession.  The sector is expected to create 12,000-23,000 new jobs in the next 2 years.)

The dollar you spend at a local business contributes three times more to the local economy than the dollar you spend at a chain store. That’s three times more income, three times more jobs, and three times more tax benefits. It’s called the local multiplier effect.

YES! magazine lays out the numbers in this downloadable poster , demonstrating how buying local can … make your money count—more than once.