Organic farmer Jack Hedin of Featherstone Farm in Rushford, MN, redefines the shipping model for small farmers by taking on trucking himself, along with several other farms. From MPR:
Until this year, the lack of transportation hurt [Hedin's] business. Hedin had to turn away [CSA] customers because he couldn’t get produce to them fresh enough, and his farm alone didn’t do enough business to cover the cost of a system of trucks and refrigeration.
But Hedin realized other farms were in the same bind. Together they could justify trucking vegetables to the Twin Cities.
“You see between three, four pallets from Rock Spring [Farm], three or four pallets from Keewatin [sic -- should be Keewaydin] and three or four of our own, we consolidate those all [and] put them in stacks according to destination,” Hedin said.
Five days a week, a truck drives produce to a warehouse in the Twin Cities. Then vans distribute the produce to spots around the metro area according to a schedule.
It’s unfortunate that MPR didn’t keep following this story, because it gets even more hip the more you know. The warehouse mentioned in the paragraph above is Co-op Partners Warehouse, a cooperatively run wholesaler that trucks local and organic produce to the many natural foods co-ops in the Twin Cities, and to restaurants and natural foods stores as far away as Duluth, Iowa City, Madison, and Milwaukee. It’s the center of a dynamic local and regional food system, and Hedin’s trucking initiative is just one of many collaborations bubbling along in CPW. Even Equal Exchange Coffee Co-op has offices, storage, and makes deliveries from CPW.
Last year when Michael Pollan wrote his open letter to the president elect, he mentioned regional wholesalers and distribution, and the words lit out from the page for me. I was like, “Whoa, this guy really understands what’s at stake here.” Because while farmers markets are great, they are simply one piece of the puzzle, and not a panacea. Regional trucking systems like Hedin’s and Co-op Partners Warehouse are going to needed over the country if small farmers are going to find their way into more grocery stores. Because as it is now, even midsized regional grocery chains of say 10 to 12 stores have a hard time buying local food. It’s hardly worth it for them, after all, to send a fleet of trucks down 20 dirt roads in order to stock 3 or 4 measly pallets per farm. But if amall, independent farmers across the country could band together like this, and partner with smaller warehouses, their access to market would be considerably increased, their distribution reach lengthened, and the nationwide local foods movement would get even greater traction.
