“We started out exactly like you—just a handful of farmers in a room trying to figure out how to make it work.” —Calvin Daily, Organic Valley a buy local incentive program specifically for food was introduced. Edible Austin will work with Sustainable Food Center, the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and GroAct to identify, and publically endorse, participating end sellers committed to buying local food. An online listserv to help connect these businesses to local farmers, producers and food manufacturers is also in the works (see page 31). Discussing education naturally led the group to look at the communication, or lack thereof, between the various stakeholders in the local food system. It was agreed that a real need exists for better networks and connections between busy growers and end sellers. Successful models of connection were examined, like FarmsReach, an online marketplace where sellers list available products and buyers log in to purchase and arrange for delivery. The service is easy to use and free while allowing producers to set their own pricing and arrange their own deliveries. Buyers benefit by having a simple and reliable way to source local food for their businesses. The group also explored various collaborative models for aggregating and distributing local foods. Calvin Daily, a regional sales manager from Organic Valley—a farmers co-op that sells dairy products, juice, meat and produce—spoke to the group about the benefits of the co-op model and how to avoid selling out cheap to corporate food-distribution companies. The Organic Valley model has been extremely successful and grown to include 1,652 farms across the country. Discussing the path of that success led to ideas for other ways to apply the co-op model, like a convenient, accessible rancher-owned slaughterhouse for affordable local meat producers. “We started out exactly like you,” Daily told the group. “Just a handful of farmers in a room trying to figure out how to make it work.” Everyone participating in the roundtable discussion agreed that the success of the local food system is vital to our community. Roadblocks are out there, but fortunately so are the answers. And as Wheatsville Co-op’s Johnny Livesay pointed out near the end of the discussion, “All of the solutions are right here in this room.” See page 31 for next steps and resources.
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Elizabeth Winslow has been a committed locavore in Austin since “evacuating” here from East Texas in 2005. A former chef and seasoned forager, she is a partner in Farmhouse Delivery, an all-local grocery delivery service, and loves bringing the bounty of local farms to happy people in Austin. EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM
SUMMER 2010
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