Good Food Collective
SUMMARY:
The Good Food Collective is a multi-farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project offering membership programs that connect people to local, sustainable foods and some of the best farmers in our area.
The Good Food Collective runs a SUMMER CSA offering a weekly distribution of fresh, organic vegetables and fruit (June-October) and a WINTER CSA offering a monthly distribution of frozen, stored, and fresh organic vegetables and fruit (December-March).
The Good Food Collective is a project of Headwater Foods, a Community Food Enterprise creating a value-filled, year-round supply chain of local, sustainable foods for the greater Rochester area.
Headwater Foods is committed to joining with others and working towards a more socially and environmentally just food system and the individual, social, economic, and ecological health of our community.
MORE INFO:
Headwater Foods, the organization behind The Good Food Collective, is a collaborative food project born out of the work that Chris Hartman, co-founder and original manager of the South Wedge Farmers’ Market, and local farmers have been doing to make more effective and affordable connections between local farms and Rochester consumers. These efforts represent a step towards a more efficient and convenient local food system and a way for Rochester to build a more durable and ecologically sound economy around food. It also has allowed Headwater Foods to develop a network of partnering, local, sustainable farms and the capacity to expand our business models and community impact.
Our existing core project, The Good Food Collective, is modeled after a traditional CSA program, where people from the community pledge to support local farms by becoming members or “shareholders” of a farm. Members pay in advance and receive a weekly “share” of the harvest and farmers are guaranteed a market.
The Good Food Collective has worked to “scale up” the CSA model and utilize the strengths of such a model to help rebuild a local, sustainable food system. In order to do that, the GFC has networked local farmers together and created a multi-farm CSA where farmers work cooperatively to supply the food for the CSA program. Additionally the GFC is focused on increasingly convenient and accessible distribution methods such as a workplace-based delivery model, signing up groups of employees at area businesses and organizations.
The Good Food Collective runs a SUMMER CSA offering a weekly distribution of fresh, local, organic vegetables and fruit (June-October) and a WINTER CSA offering a monthly distribution of frozen, stored, and fresh, local, organic vegetables and fruit (December-March). Distribution takes place from our mobile GREEN BEAN MACHINE, a converted 24 foot, refrigerated step-van with an awning and fold out distribution display table.
In starting our Winter CSA, We are working with Winter Sun Farms, a winter CSA program and processing facility in the Hudson Valley/NYC. Winter Sun Farms works with a network of farms in the Hudson Valley, NY and processes and freezes the summer harvest for year-round distribution. Our goal is to create a year-round, value filled supply chain of local food. This pilot Winter CSA allows us to establish a market and begin the planning towards the setup of similar processing facilities here in Rochester and the development of an expansive year-round offering of local, sustainable foods in this area.
Headwater Foods, Inc.
VISION: A vertically integrated, soil-to-table, Community Food Enterprise that creates a value-filled, year-round supply chain of local, sustainable foods for the greater Rochester area.
Headwater Foods Inc. is an organization committed to the development of sustainable, localized food systems and the associated individual, social, economic, and ecological health of the Rochester community. Using creative business models, Headwater Foods Inc. seeks to promote local, sustainable agriculture; a regional food system; accessible and fair GOOD FOOD options for all people; and an enhancement and celebration of Rochester’s food history and culture.
Headwater Foods is looking to understand the entire value chain associated with a socially and environmentally just food system and working to create multiple layers of benefit. Although our work has the key priority of creating access to fresh, healthy, sustainable, and affordable foods for all people, a focus on individuals’ health and food security, we seek also to build an economy around a local food system, support local sustainable farmers, create jobs for local urban and rural people, and develop our region’s ability to retain more of the wealth spent on food in this area. This holistic approach to co-consider the individual, social, economic, and ecological health of our communities and citizens is the strategic thinking behind our actions.