Member Spotlight

Vicky Brown works with students to grow food for the cafeteria at North Powder Charter School’s school garden.

Chuck Lowry has been raising beef cattle for 30 years. And while he has been selling cuts to friends and family from his ranch in Baker City for years, as well as into the conventional market, it didn’t occur to him that there was another local market he was missing out on.

That is until Vicky Brown of North Powder Charter School in North Powder, OR, found Lowry Family Beef on FoodHub. This year, she purchased ground beef and roast, and plans to do it again for the next school year.

“Chuck was very excited to help us out and very proactive in promoting his beef,” she said, “and it is a fabulous product. FoodHub is a great resource for me. I can check out product and communicate with my lap top rather than getting on the phone.”

And while it may be easy to find beef in cattle country, as a recipient of HB 2800 funds, which granted nearly $200,000 to 11 Oregon schools to purchase more Oregon product, Vicky said her school district and others in Eastern Oregon are still struggling to procure other local items and have them distributed to their dispersed locations.

Some distributors do have routes through the area, but many broadliners usually arrive from Boise or Spokane and, according to Vicky who is charged with tracking the provenance of her HB 2800 purchases, don’t carry Oregon-grown products. Many farmers regularly drive upwards of four hours to distribute their product into the Portland market, but, Vicky said, it’s been a challenge to encourage them to look in their own back yard for customers.

“Here in Eastern Oregon it’s all about distribution, distribution, distribution,” said Vicky.”We have until the end of June to spend the money but getting product is hard. Our time is precious and these food service ladies are going to farms and getting product on their own.”

According to a survey conducted by FoodHub and Ecotrust’s Farm to School staff of schools and pre-schools in Eastern Oregon, 142,700 meals are served daily to children by these kitchens and cafeterias. Roughly speaking, if all of these schools and preschools purchased Hermiston watermelon for just one of these meals or snacks (about 125,340 servings), it would support the purchase of 20,548 pounds of watermelon, and return about $15,411 into the local market at $0.75 per pound.

“This is my second year tapping into other local schools and trying to gather our purchasing power,” said Vicky who regularly coordinates purchase and delivery of product not only for her own kitchen, but also for others in a similar situation including the staff in Joseph, also HB 2800 recipients, who will often drive nearly two hours on their own time to pick up their portion of joint purchases. “The need is here,” she said.

Flex your region’s connections.

Build a business case for your region’s local food system by searching for other buyers in your area to start coordinating purchases. If you’re a seller looking for new local markets, use the Knowledgebase to find direct marketing tips and best practices. Have something to offer that’s not food? The Marketplace is ideal for advertising cold storage or commercial kitchen space that’s available for others in your community to use and may also be easy one-stop pick up sites for any coordinated purchases.

Farmers from Adelante Agricultura and Melissa Lusk of OCDC meet to discuss challenges and opportunities of local sourcing during the Washington County Farm to School Meet and Greet.

Rebuilding the local food economy takes flexibility, ingenuity, and great partnerships. As more nonprofits and advocacy organizations take the lead in connecting local buyers and sellers, relationships are initiated and built in a variety of settings. Adelante Mujeres – a nonprofit in Forest Grove, OR that not only trains and educates aspiring Latino farmers, but also helps those growers build business relationships and thrive in new markets – had one such opportunity to build grower-buyer relationships through a Washington County Farm to School Meet and Greet hosted by Ecotrust’s Farm to School staff.

To reach out to schools and producers in and around Washington County, the Farm to School team used FoodHub to bring good potential online connections to life.

“FoodHub is one of the main ways through which we search for potential event attendees,” said Ecotrust Farm to School Coordinator Katy Pelissier. “Its a quick and easy way for us to search for buyers and sellers that we know will be interested in working together. And, we know it will be straightforward for them to follow up with each other after the event, because they can continue to connect on FoodHub.” (more…)

An annual event for the past seven years, the Local Food Connection in Eugene, OR, has truly become a hub for creating connections. Hosting more than 250 attendees last year – including 70 buyers or distributors, 28 processors, and 71 regional producers – the conference has one overarching goal: Help people find new business opportunities.

“If you’re coming with a product to sell, we determine our success by helping you find a new place to sell it,” said Event Coordinator Jared Pruch. “For food buyers the goal of the conference is to let you know about opportunities to buy locally produced food.”

The theme of the 2013 conference is “Values Added: Celebrating the Values of Our Local Food System”, reflecting the stories and values that lie behind local food products, and the place-based and cultural significance of this unique food region. A new feature this year, conference organizers will be acting as connection brokers to ease the process of finding the right person to talk to in a room of 200.

“The most valuable aspect of this event is just having everyone in the same room for the day. Having that face-to-face time is really important,” said Pruch. “In the past we left it up to attendees to find each other. This year we’re incorporating brokers who have a roster of food buyers from restaurants, grocery stores or institutions ahead of time so that when people try to connect there will be someone there to help make an introduction.”

In addition to providing brokers for their networking sessions, the conference will host several new panels including breakout sessions about starting a food cart and building community food systems in rural areas. Along with new breakout sessions, the conference will be bringing Jacques Gibson to the podium for a keynote address covering his family’s success through Lochmead Dairy, which was one of seven dairies in operation in the Junction City, OR, in the 1950s and today is the only one left.

“He’s going to talk about some of the key decision they made that helped them grow their business from a small family business to regional food player,” Pruch said.

Attendees can also look forward to a locally sourced lunch, which, last year, left one university school buyer – who provided the conference with an anonymous testimonial – impressed with the variety of products available in what is typically thought of as the off season.

“I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the ingredients that were donated prepared in different manners,” they said. “I also thought that since we were not in peak season it was a great variety with what was available, and I wanted to taste everything.”

Registration for the conference is $30 and includes breakfast and a light lunch as well as the attendee’s choice of workshops.

More information about the 2013 Local Food Connection can be found online at localfoodconnection.org.

It’s been a big year for organic. Earlier this year the Organic Trade Association released an infographic illustrating the mammoth economic impact of organic products : In 2011 alone the sector grew by nearly 10 percent to over $30 billion, with increased sales in organic fruits and vegetable contributing more than 50 percent of those new dollars. While that is excellent growth, Natalie Reitman-White, Director of Sustainability at Organically Grown Company, says it’s no time for folks who work in the organic food sector to rest on their laurels.

“The organic movement and the organic trade are living and breathing and constantly evolving based on the amount of energy we put into them,” she says. “As more people are turned onto organics and those products are becoming more available, it’s about understanding the variety that you have to choose from and who you’re supporting in the marketplace.”

That’s what she hopes participants will take away from this year’s Organicology conference happening Thursday-Saturday, Feb.7-9, 2013, at the Hilton Downtown in Portland, OR.

Now in its third year, the biannual conference brings together the organic food community – including growers, eaters and advocates – to advance knowledge of the sector and address challenges faced by organic food producers through workshops, networking, a trade show and keynote addresses from industry experts.

“While there are a lot of sustainable ag conferences, this is the premier venue for experts in the organic policy arena, as well as the organic farming and retail arenas to share their knowledge,” Reitman-White says. (more…)