Local food & the farms in the middle
Last week, I participated in a panel at SUNY Potsdam with a bunch of farmers and agricuture advocates who have a great sense of the current pulse of the local food movement as it currently exists in the North Country. It was fascinating, and I thank the university and Ray Bowdish, who runs a nursery in Lisbon, for putting it on.
Basically, things shake out this way.
We have dairy farms that represent the lion’s share of agricultural sales in the region. Their numbers are shrinking but the ones that are left keep growing in size.
And we have a growing number of “micro farms” – fruit, vegetable, and dairy farmers who sell at farmers markets, roadside stands, CSAs, etc. These farms are where the action is in North Country agriculture – their numbers grew steadily in the 2000s and continue to increase. But “micros” generate a teensy portion of overall agricultural sales – less than 1%.
What’s missing – and what everyone’s watching for – are mid-size farms that can make a mark on the economy and break through to a greater number of consumers. As Gardenshare’s Phil Harnden put it, “I’m interested in the farms in the middle.”
The North Country isn’t alone. Just read this New York Times forum about the challenges of bringing local foods to a bigger market.
The issues are the same ones I heard at the SUNY Potsdam panel. Small farmers need places to process, freeze, and store their produce to extend the season. They need central distribution to be able to sell to big purchasers, like universities, schools, restaurants, and grocery stores. And they need help from the USDA to change federal agricultural policy that hugely favors big Ag, commodity farming.
Things are starting to happen in the middle in the North Country. Sustain potato chips in Malone is distributing region-wide by piggybacking on Glaziers’ meat trucks. The North Country Grown Cooperative is freezing and storing asparagus for the first time next month.
The big question – and the one we’ll explore a lot here and on the radio: can the North Country’s local food movement occupy enough of the middle to become a significant contributor to the economy, attract more consumers, and allow farmers to make a living.
The short answer is no. There are not enough people in the area to consume all the food the farms are capable of producing. The buy local movement is great for a few of us, but, if we are to have a diverse farming industry in the North Country, we need to move our production into the metropolitan areas a few hours south of us.
[…] the local food movement faces to grow beyond its niche market status. Here we’re calling it “occupying the middle” between micro-farms and big […]
We agree then?
Several decades ago dairy farmers formed cooperatives to collectively market their milk. For the most part this has worked. Until the middle farmers you write about get together and find the means to get their products to a larger market they will be limited in both the amount they will be able to sell and the price they can recieve.
There is some movement in doing that by a few sheep farmers seling their lambs collectively into the Boston area. The buyer is very specific in what she wants, so, not every farm has the right stock.
The market contacts and all the arrangements are made by the farmers themselves.
The essential points are, farmer involvement, finding the market and providing what the buyer wants. Simple enough, but, you’d be surprised how hard that is to do.
Hey Kirby –
I’m not sure who posted that other comment in there. That’s weird.
What’s interesting to me is that right now I’ve been hearing very committed local food proponents privately expressing some pretty deep skepticism about the “movement”‘s ability to really make an economic dent.
Do you really think it can’t be more than a “micro-movement”?
David,
We frequently visit the orchards in the Franklin Quebec area in the fall. Theyhave a thriving local and agro-tourism business which I presume brings in quite a bit of cash. I suspect that the bulk of their profits come from the tractor trailers being loaded in the orchards and the apples going into winter storage.
We also visit the farmers markets in Montreal.
The local movement here may be a small portion of the total profit potential but it can be an essential part of the cash flow statement. I’m not discounting its importance, I’m merely stating the opinion that we have too small a population in the NC to sustain more than a few farms by ourselves. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to give up the five farmers markets I attend each week in the summer, yet.
I’m, still going to cash the check from those lambs I’ll load on the truck to Boston.