Financing Farm To Fork ConferenceI think it really says something about the growth of local food that this event is taking place in Chicago—a serious food town. In 2004, Sandy Streed of the Illinois Food Safety Center and I organized an Illinois Farm to Fork Event at Joliet Junior College. It was fabulously educational and fun, but there sure weren’t any investment types there.Although, Marketmaker in the form of Dar Knipe was there and she did a wonderful job. It’s a huge credit to the local food movement and to the individual entrepreneurs and to familyfarmed that the money folks are showing up now. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.” Indeed. And when you put a market and money together with a marketmaker, it's an even better thing...
[ add comment ] ( 30 views ) | permalink
I am busy working on The Chicago Farmers Farmland Investment Fair because it’s coming up next Saturday Feb 6, 2010 www.chicagofarmers.org. This event is devoted to farmland investing and definitely has some sessions of interest for local and regional food people. I have to wonder, what farmland use in the Midwest would look like if the region really put some muscle behind local food production and distribution. I think the past is prologue here. One of the big clues is The Wagner Farm in Glenview. http://www.wagnerfarm.org/. The Wagner Farm now sits on about 19 acres of prime North shore Real Estate, and the farm has dairy cows there. Yes, you read that right, there really are Holsteins living in Glenview.. The Farm has been reincarnated as a living history museum. However, in its prime, in the 20s, the Farm was about a 100 acres. In the 20,s there were 5,000 of these kind of farms in Cook County, Illinois. Farms like the Wagner’s supplied much of Chicago’s milk and vegetables, and the Wagner’s really were true Chicago Farmers. They farmed near and for Chicago, and if local food is truly going to happen, the future may look like the past.
[ add comment ] ( 52 views ) | permalink | related link
If the tie between new media/social media and local food and agriculture did not already exist, it would have to be invented. Just as farmers’ markets allow producers to sell to consumers without a brick and mortar grocery store, new media/social media channels allow people to create their own platforms to communicate directly through the internet with their own content. The vehicles are increasingly familiar: Blogs, YouTube, Podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, and Email Newsletters.
For local food producers, selling directly to consumers could be familiar territory. What’s new and exciting in this picture is that social media gives growers a platform to reach consumers directly and easily. Websites in the beginning were expensive and hard for non technical people to update; blogs on the other hand are cheap, fast and easy. Putting new content on websites required someone who knew html, but if you can send an email, you can put content on your blog. For example, I blog at www.schellacres.com. The blog allows me to reach readers without a magazine or newspaper and lets me post audio clips without an interview done at a radio station. Another example is the publication I wrote on selling food directly, A Legal Guide to Illinois Laws Governing Direct Farm Marketing. It used to be only available in print but, now it’s available as a pdf from a couple of sources including: http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/asse ... market.pdf
In 2007, I posted a commentary about Chuck Zimmerman’s site Agwired (www.agwired.com) on my blog at www.schellacres.com. Chuck was one of the first people in agriculture who went into social media in a big way. He was a pioneer in using podcasting, videocasting and offering blogging services to the farm community.
When I talked with him we both focused on the book The Long Tail Why Selling More Of Less Is The Future by Chris Anderson. The book title refers to the small part of a bell curve distribution. This is the thin part at the furthest edges. The fat part of the curve is where 90 percent of the product usually is sold— as the book illustrates, think of buying CDs at Wal-Mart vs. Amazon. Wal-Mart stocks the top 10 CDs and counts on selling a lot of them. Amazon stocks almost every CD and sells less of a lot more categories. Amazon, of course, could not exist without the internet. The internet and their low cost storage facilities make it possible for Amazon to hold inventory until it is sold. The local food parallels are similar—a website/blog makes it possible to give the market the detail on how to buy local food—cheaply and relatively easily. This applies even if most of the food by volume still goes through supermarket channels.
But, the change is a lot more than just a way of getting the word out, the internet also allows local food providers to be able to build a community around their food. Facebook, Twitter, and email newsletters all can help local producers build a following. The good news is that local food purchasers seem to want to connect in virtual and real communities. These people like to get to know each other and their local food producers. For more info on social media and where it fits into farming, see my interview with Chuck Zimmerman at http://agwired.com/2009/12/30/chicago-f ... ial-media/.
[ add comment ] ( 81 views ) | permalink
I was watching the network news last weekend and was surprised to learn that some folks can’t find pumpkins this year. I typically don’t worry about pumpkins until the week before Halloween and the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas so it truly was “news to me”. A quick search of the blogosphere confirmed the problem. For some weeks, consumers have had problems finding canned pumpkin in the stores and the pain has been felt all across the country. When the news media started reporting disruptions in the supply of fresh pumpkins the two events became the perfect storm that has created a pumpkin panic of sorts.
The Great Pumpkin Panic of 2009? My Advice is "Don't Panic"I decided to reach out to Bill Shoemaker, a colleague of mine and a Fruit and Vegetable Crops Specialist with the University of Illinois to get his expert perspective. The canned pumpkin shortage is the result of less than optimum growing seasons in previous years in parts of the country that supply a large portion of the nation’s pumpkins. That includes Illinois. The canned pumpkin problem, Bill says, should start to improve as more of this season’s crop is harvested. As for a shortage of fresh pumpkins that is a combination of regional shortages primarily in the Northeast and a late growing season in other parts of the country.
There is good news, however, for all of you who are worried that there will be no Jack o Lanterns for Halloween or pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner. Pumpkins are grown in many shapes and varieties all over the country. Food MarketMaker provides information on over 1500 pumpkin growers across 13 states many of whom have product for sale right now. Check out the Buy Sell Forum on MarketMaker http://www.marketmaker.uiuc.edu/marketplace_home.php or simply do a search on MarketMaker for pumpkin growers in your area or around the country. Just click on any of the MarketMaker states to begin your search http://national.marketmaker.uiuc.edu/
If canned pumpkin continues to be in short supply, be adventuresome and try pumpkin pie made from scratch. For those of you who think using canned pumpkin is making it from scratch, I am talking about buying a fresh pumpkin, baking it in the oven and making your own pumpkin pie filling. If you are several generations removed from any family member who has ever cooked fresh pumpkin, check out http://urbanext.illinois.edu/pumpkins/selection.html. It walks you through the process from selection to preparation in pretty easy to follow steps. My thanks to Drusilla Banks with University of Illinois’ Nutrition and Wellness team for preparing that fact sheet.
Happy pumpkin hunting.
[ add comment ] ( 314 views ) | permalink
About a year and a half ago the University of Arkansas’ Applied Sustainability Center began working with Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and their Heritage Agriculture program, which has the goal of creating supply chain visibility between local and regional food sources supplying their stores. It was apparent that a tool would be necessary for buyers to locate and engage small- and medium-scale producers, we were thinking that some sort of internet-based platform would be the best way to go.
MarketMaker’s Utility for Large MarketsImagine how delighted we were to find out that the necessary tool already existed, had a presence in several states with support of extension from land-grant universities and state departments of agriculture, and was free to all users! Large-scale buyers need a central location to find sources to supply their local food programs. Producers who might be interested in scaling up their marketing efforts need a user-friendly way to gain exposure to the new distribution opportunities we’re seeing with consumer interest in fresh, local and healthy foods.
The Applied Sustainability Center has launched a program we call Agile Agriculture to take advantage of the favorable conditions we are seeing for producers, distributors and consumers of agricultural products. Large, undifferentiated markets aren’t suitable for many small/medium scale producers, but with the right education and tools we see potentials for more of our smaller producers to supply these arenas and provide healthy, local and fresh products to consumers. MarketMaker is quickly gaining in importance as a tool to link producers and markets of all scales and we’re looking forward to watching this program develop.
[ add comment ] ( 1192 views ) | permalink | related link
Calendar
