April 2009
Diana Louise Carter
Democrate and Chronicle Staff writer
One day last summer, Fred Forsburg arrived at Honeyhill Farm in Livonia, Livingston County, not sure how he got there.
He was so fatigued from farming and selling at four different farm markets each week, he couldn’t recall the drive home.
This summer, things will be different, even though Forsburg is planning on raising and selling more organic produce and poultry than in previous years. Honeyhill Farm is one of eight farms that have joined with farm market impresario Chris Hartman to create the Good Food Cooperative.
The cooperative is in the process of setting up what’s known as a community-supported agriculture program, in which consumers pay a fixed price for a season’s worth of produce, delivered weekly. CSAs are popping up around the state, but this may be the first one that delivers its goods directly to shareholders’ workplaces, eliminating the need for consumers to make special trips at special times to pick up their boxes of fruits and vegetables.
Nixon Peabody LLP is the first employer to join the collective, with 31 employees signing on.
“I like to go to the farmers markets, but I don’t always have a chance to do so,” said Jennifer Vrielynck, the supervisor of the law firm’s information processing center who organized the Rochester office’s participation in the CSA.
Participating employers help publicize the program among workers and provide a location where deliveries can be made once a week. There are no other costs to the company. Vrielynck said a conference room most likely will be the collection point at Nixon Peabody, and deliveries will coincide with workers’ lunch hours each Friday, beginning in early June.
The law firm’s employees have agreed to pay $585 each for 23 weeks worth of fresh vegetables and fruits. Signing up and paying can all be done online.
Hartman, who co-founded with his wife the South Wedge Farmers Market in 2007 and the Westside Farmers Market last year, said the collective aims to achieve economies and add convenience that strengthen the local food system.
“Farmers markets are great and wonderful,” he said, but while farmers who participate in them benefit by being able to meet and connect with their customers, they lose time on the farm raising their crops. Participating in a CSA gives farmers some of that time back.
“It is very time-consuming to have to be (at farmers markets),” said Duncan L. Hilchey, an Ithaca-based farm systems consultant who also does research with the Cornell Cooperative Extension. “It’s not like (farmers have) eliminated the middleman when they do direct marketing; they have to become the middleman, and take on the costs of the middle man.”
Organic products can fetch a considerable price, and Hartman said one reason the prices are high is that the farmers have to factor in the time they spend at farmers markets. The collective is promising that prices will be the same as or lower than local grocery stores’ prices.
Anticipating perhaps a $20,000 boost in revenue because of new demand from the CSA, Forsburg is having a fourth greenhouse built, will raise onions for the first time and is planting four or five times more potatoes than usual.
The collective is seeking 200 shareholders this first year, aiming to expand to 1,000 within a few years. It’s likely that additional farms will participate as demand grows.
Forsburg, meanwhile, will continue to sell at the South Wedge market, as well as the Rochester Public Market, perhaps enjoying his time there even more than before.
“If I can get to the market and have 200 units of what I’ve got sold before I get there, that’s fantastic,” Forsburg said.
Hilchey said CSAs may compete a bit with local farm markets for vendors, but if the markets are well-organized, new farmers can be recruited to take their places.
“It’s growing pains, but in general that’s a good thing to see this,” Hilchey said. “I don’t think they’re going to put farmers markets out of business for one very big reason. Farmers markets serve a far different purpose than CSAs. With CSAs, it’s really about the quality of the food and the connection with the farmer.”
Properly run farmers markets and public markets create an entire experience where people like to linger, get something to eat, run into friends and even listen to music, he said.
Still, the proliferation of both means the local food delivery system is maturing, Hilchey said.
“Multi-farm cooperative CSAs is the next wave.”
DCARTER@DemocratandChronicle.com
