Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Iowa Food Cooperative launched in Des Moines shopping center

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2008

This small shop in Merle Hay Mall is open only one day a month but business is booming. Loads of food – such as home-grown potatoes, apples, honey and frozen meat – come into the store all morning long, to be assembled and re-packaged by volunteers, then stacked neatly on wire shelves and in coolers and freezers for customers to pick up during the rest of the day.

The thriving new business is the Iowa Food Cooperative, which opened November 20. Two years of groundwork for the venture was funded by a $47,600 competitive grant from the Leopold Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative. The project also has received assistance from Blooming Prairie Foundation, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and a natural resource-based business opportunity grant. Merle Hay Mall has donated retail space for the cooperative’s first year of operation.

Here’s how the coop works: Farmer-members indicate what products are available and their prices, which are posted on a web site where members also place orders. Farmers bring their products to the Des Moines mall for pick-up by members one day each month. The first month’s pick-up had 44 orders totaling nearly $3,500, which included a 10 percent handling fee for the coop.

For Ankeny farmer LaVon Griffieon, it was a 10-year dream come true.

“I am beaming from ear to ear,” she said during a short ribbon-cutting ceremony. “It has been a dream of mine as a farmer to be able to drop off my product, go back to farming, and have a check sent to me in the mail. I’ve sold more product today than in a month’s worth of farmer’s markets.”

Griffieon is one of 43 producers who are members of the Iowa Food Cooperative. She sells beef, chicken, turkeys, pork and eggs from her family farm directly to customers. From May through October, she also sells at farmers markets in Ankeny and Polk City.

Chris Lerch of Milo has been grazing cattle on 70 acres near Milo for the past 10 years. Although he sells his free-range beef in Indianola and Des Moines farmers markets, the Iowa Food Cooperative promises to be a good winter market for his small company.

“I really think this is going to work,” he said. “People are starved for good local products. We’ve been told to eat local and in season, and now we can finally do it.”

Ken Smith is a grower for Innovative Growers of State Center and the Iowa Natural brand of low-linolenic soybean oil that has less saturated fat than other soybean oils. He said he hopes to market some of these products through the Iowa Food Cooperative, even though they are available in many Iowa grocery stores.

“This is what a group like us needs to get our story out,” he said. “Once people have tried it, the product will sell itself, but this is a great avenue for us to pursue.”

The IFC web currently site lists nearly 300 products, including poinsettias during the holidays, several kinds of Iowa cheese, soap and produce, which this time of year includes certified organic greenhouse tomatoes along with potatoes, onions and other root vegetables that can be stored.

“This is the first time I’ve sold produce in November,” remarked Julie Wilbur, who has a community supported agriculture enterprise in Boone. “Usually after the farmers markets close, there’s no other way to sell produce.”

President of the cooperative is Jason Jones, who works with the produce and orchard operations at The Homestead facility for adults with autism near Runnells. He said the coop is a good way to connect producers with customers while offering convenience.

Gary Huber from Practical Farmers of Iowa was project manager for the Leopold Center grant, and currently serves as interim manager for the cooperative. Huber said the business is modeled after similar successful ventures in Oklahoma and Nebraska.

Back to Leopold Letter Winter 2008