Project Update #2

Radish greens: underrated

Is late September the official rainy season in Bloomington? I spent a few hours at the IU Campus Garden weeding in the rain this past Tuesday, until lightning reared its head and I was forced to head inside and spend my time sanitizing equipment (not as fun). Once the thunder subsided I headed back out into the drizzle with some other volunteers to help harvest vegetables for the RPS cafeterias. We had quite a nice haul: 5 large tubs worth of tomatoes, spinach, arugula, kale, chard, leeks, and radishes. After meeting the RPS required quota, we were allowed to head back out in the rain and sample some for ourselves. I don't normally like arugula, but right out of the ground it is delicious- very mild yet spicy. That night I prepared some fresh radishes using a new recipe- did you know radish greens are edible and oh so tasty!?

This morning I sat down and spoke with Jodee Ellett of the Bloomington Local Growers Guild  to talk about her efforts to build a distribution network for local food in the region. Right now, the best ways that local farmers can get their products to market is through farmers' markets, or by connections to individual restauranteurs- generally higher class operations such as FARM or Tallent who can pay the higher prices for local food at smaller volumes.

The other option for local growers is to sell to a conventional wholesaler such as Troyers, Piazza, or US Foods, who pay very low prices. The idea of a local distribution hub would be to act as a wholesaler for local farmers who might not be able to meet mass orders of a product by themselves, but combined with others could provide local restaurants and institutions with the fresh, healthy produce they are looking for.

And they are, in fact, looking for it. According to Jodee, many members of BIRA (the Bloomington Independent Restaurants Association)  would love to source more local food as a way to support the community as well as differentiate themselves from chain restaurants. Using local food improves your quality, and also your brand. However, aside from the upscale restaurants, most either cannot afford local food or cannot deal with the uncertainty of supply availability.

The distribution hub, planned to go online in spring of 2013, would hopefully solve some of these problems by pooling supply in order to reduce variability, and decreasing operating costs per order because higher volumes and economies of scale. Even though costs to the buyer would decrease, Jodee is confident that the farmers will still be getting paid the same or better prices compared to conventional wholesalers, in part because of the use of volunteer labor to begin with. But, if volumes became large enough there is even potential to someday turn a profit.

I have reached out to two other local food distribution organizations that have served as models for the Local Growers Guild: Green Bean Delivery in Indianapolis and Grasshoppers Distribution in Louisville KY. Hopefully I will get a chance to visit one of these sites and write about it in a future blog post!