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Letter from the General Manager
BriarPatch’s commitment to a stronger local food system
By Chris Maher, General Manager
One of our Board’s Ends Policies directs us to ensure a stronger local food system. We’re constantly working toward this vision with ongoing and short-term initiatives supporting this progress.
To us, this means being an integral part of our local agricultural and food production and distribution systems. This is critical to ensuring our customers’ access to local foods, as these offerings are usually among the healthiest for our bodies and our planet. And, our support of other businesses within this system strengthens our local economy and thereby our overall economy.
We measure the success of our support of local producers by how much the sales and purchases of these products grow each year and by how many new vendors we add to our list of suppliers. Our efforts to see this number grow help us prioritize purchasing these items over those that do not fit the local designation. It also guides us to back these producers with technical, financial and other forms of support. I am pleased to share that in 2020, local food sales grew in all departments yet again.
BriarPatch’s commitment to a stronger local food system goes beyond selling products. The Co-op also provides crucial financial support to farmers through initiatives such as:
Our Organic Certification Prepayment Program — Helping farmers and local producers achieve USDA Organic Certification if they haven’t already by fronting certification costs and then deducting the repayment from invoices over time; and
Our Loan Guarantee Program — Partnering with California FarmLink, a non-profit organization providing equipment and operating loans to farmers, BriarPatch vets and recommends local farmers with strong patterns of success selling to the Co-op, and then pays the loan start-up fee. The Co-op guarantees half the borrowed amount, reducing loan interest charged and saving farmers hundreds of dollars. Our Board recently raised the loan guarantee limit to $250,000, helping us meet increased enthusiasm and further strengthen our local food system and security.
Success in this work builds sustainability and ongoing regional food security. It is important to note how the resiliency we worked to create through our support of local served us in the pandemic. With the State’s shelter-in-place order, conventional channels for food distribution strained from the surge buying that followed. Our local farmers came to the rescue and the existing systems allowed us to keep our shelves filled with many of the things customers wanted.
Opening our new Auburn store will give us the opportunity to further develop our support of, and evolve the meaning and value of, local in the food system. It will also open a new market to our existing farmers and help foster relationships with those we haven’t yet met. What an exciting opportunity we find before us!
