Farmers learn strategies to supply new markets
Rink DaVee has little trouble getting chefs in Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison to buy locally grown produce, but the challenge is creating a system for farmers to supply those restaurants.
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Rink DaVee |
DaVee shared some of his strategies with more than 75 Iowa farmers and others who attended a one-day institutional marketing workshop in January co-sponsored by Practical Farmers of Iowa and the Leopold Center. The workshop focused on economic opportunities for farmers who want to sell fruits, vegetables and meat to restaurants, food service vendors, cafeterias and schools.
“Chefs in Chicago tell me that every year more and more of their customers want locally-grown food,” said DaVee, who operates Homegrown Wisconsin, a marketing group for 25 farm families in southern Wisconsin. “I think this farmer-chef relationship will be increasingly important in the future.”
Homegrown Wisconsin farmers already sell about 70 percent of their produce at farmers markets, through community supported agriculture (CSA) enterprises, and directly to customers. However, DaVee said the cooperative has given its members a high-paying market that they would not have the time or expertise to reach individually.
Farmers deliver their produce to a central warehouse in Madison, where food is loaded onto a truck bound for 30 restaurants. Chefs order from a weekly list of available fruits and vegetables, compiled from information supplied by each farmer. The cooperative generated about $300,000 in sales in 2002.
DaVee shared a session with Michael Rozyne of Red Tomato, a Massachusetts-based broker who distributes sustainably raised fruits and vegetables to five supermarket chains and retail cooperatives in three states. Before he started Red Tomato in 1996, Rozyne co-founded Equal Exchange, which is now the largest seller of fair-trade coffee in North America.
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Michael Rozyne |
At the workshop Rozyne talked about the challenges of establishing and supplying specialty markets and the “false peaks” that accompany the business. But he said there is a silver lining in highly concentrated distribution networks that offer year-round supplies of produce shipped thousands of miles.
“One of the few advantages of this global economy to farmers is that the quality of food has gone down,” Rozyne said. “Your main opportunity is to provide produce that is the best in quality, taste and freshness.”
Another opportunity is for brand identity for products unique to a region. Rozyne has been successful in its “Born and Raised Here” campaign that features apples from trees native to the region. The fruit is sold only in season.
Challenges include setting up a reliable transportation and delivery system, providing customized service, dealing with products with seasonal availability, matching low prices of much larger distributor and, as Rozyne put it, “the emotional impact of fighting the system.”
Also helping with the workshop were the Risk Management Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Iowa State University Extension.
Other workshop sessions included information about legal requirements, forward contracts, liability issues and other successful marketing efforts. All participants received a reference manual.