Beyond Farmers Markets: Why Local Food Belongs on Grocery Shelves

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/beyond-farmers-markets-why-local-food-belongs-on-grocery-shelves/262064/


Food hub Keewayden Farms sells organic Wisconsin-grown products to grocers in the Midwest. (rufushau)

Several years ago, South Carolina dairyman Tom Trantham presented me with a conundrum. "We grow great peaches here," he said, "some of the best in the country. But once they're picked, they disappear - at least for a little while." After harvest, the South Carolina peaches were shipped to California, where they were repacked and sold wholesale to companies that supply the nation's major grocers. "And then those peaches get put on another truck and shipped right back to South Carolina, where they end up on our store shelves," Tom said. "Can you explain how that makes any sense?"

The national and international distribution chains that Tom described have evolved over time to the point where they are highly organized and streamlined. For American agriculture, this network has helped farmers increase their bottom line and enabled a remarkable trade surplus in agriculture - which set records last year at nearly $43 billion and supported more than a million American jobs.

But we also know that there are tremendous untapped opportunities for producers to sell their products locally, further fueling the U.S. economy and expanding agriculture's impact. When South Carolina peaches are sold directly to South Carolinians, there are uniquely local economic benefits. When the farmer, the packer, the wholesaler, and the retailer all prosper in the same region, it creates opportunity for home-grown jobs, draws more people into agriculture, and fosters relationships between the people who buy food and the people who grow it.

This is happening in places like Charlottesville, Virginia, where Local Food Hub aggregates products from more than 70 farms in the state, markets them to institutions, restaurants and grocers, and distributes them to more than 150 locations in the region, including the cafeteria at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The "food hub" model is gaining traction nationwide as a vehicle to help small and midsized farms supply buyers they cannot reach on their own, and for these buyers to access large volumes of local product.