Business Marketing | Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners

Maine Farmers Expand to Online Markets

Holli Cederholm — Fri, 28 May 2021 18:17:47 +0000

By Catie Joyce-Bulay

Last season the confusion and safety concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic brought on a need for farmers to pivot to new marketing strategies. They worked quickly to build no-contact sales and distribution systems, rapidly changing how they got product out to customers. Many farmers turned to the internet.

Although many farms incorporated online stores or ordering systems for the first time last year, a shift to web-based sales was already a growing trend. Kari Hulva, of Timber Frame Farm, which sells pasture-raised chicken, eggs, small fruits and vegetables, started an online market in the end of 2018 “to solve my own problem,” he says. When his small farmstand in Unity, Maine, closed in the winter he couldn’t find a market to sell his chicken so he started selling through a multi-producer software platform called FarmDrop with a few of his farmer friends.

For the first couple years Unity FarmDrop made a few hundred dollars a week, some weeks selling only a carton or two of eggs, says Kaya Pulz, a recent Unity College graduate who helped start the online store, which is sponsored by Unity Barn Raisers, with Hulva and Heather Holland of Outland Farm Brewery.

Kaya Pulz, one of Central Maine FarmDrop’s managers, and volunteer Hannah Poisson-Smith staff a FarmDrop pick-up location. Photo courtesy of Central Maine FarmDrop

Then the pandemic hit and eaters became very interested in finding secure local food sources. Unity FarmDrop’s orders jumped to 100 per week in a two-week period, and they soon expanded to include 25 participating producers.

This year they changed their name to Central Maine FarmDrop and expanded to offer eight different pick-up locations. Then Hulva had a light-bulb moment: He realized that by having participating farmers become pick-up locations they could easily expand the market’s reach without much extra effort or time since farmers were already headed back to their farm, after dropping off product, with empty trucks.

“The idea is to have a Portland-size market in every town in Central Maine,” says Hulva. “The information and technology from the [FarmDrop] website allows us to communicate in a way that wasn’t really feasible before.”

The store is open year-round and it opens for orders at 9 a.m. on Saturdays and closes Thursdays at 3 p.m. Vendors pack their products on Fridays from noon to 1 p.m. at the Unity Community Center and customer pick-up runs from 2 or 3 p.m. to 5 or 6 p.m., depending on locations, which are in Unity, Pittsfield, Waldo, Newport, Waterville and Lincolnville, with a delivery option for the Hampden area.

Central Maine FarmDrop encourages farmers to branch into value-added products, says Hulva. “Producers disappearing in the fall is a big problem of local ag,” he says. “Every spring farmers are searching for their customers to come back. We really focused on value-added to keep it going over the winter.”

Central Maine FarmDrop offers a variety of locally made farm products, including meats, cheeses and baked goods that help them maintain customers throughout the winter. Photo courtesy of Central Maine FarmDrop

In addition to fresh in-season produce Central Maine FarmDrop offers meats, cheeses, canned products and baked goods, as well as organic coffee locally roasted by Farm House Coffee Roasters in Winterport and organic flours from Maine Grains in Skowhegan.

From Development to Delivery

Central Maine FarmDrop is one of about a dozen FarmDrops in Maine and New York. The FarmDrop platform acts as an online marketing tool for any group of farmers to connect to their local or “hyper local” customers. The original FarmDrop was started in Blue Hill in 2011 by George Hurvitt and his mother Mary-Alice as a way to support local farms and offer more fresh produce through the winter at the Blue Hill Wine Shop.

In 2018 Hannah Semler, FarmDrop CEO, and Kelin Welborn, COO, took the helm of the online marketplace, becoming the official co-founders and scaling it up for more locations. This involved not just fine-tuning the software, which went through several iterations, says Semler, but also building a platform for farmers that includes training modules in transferable skills like how to take digital photographs of products and write product descriptions.

“The newness of FarmDrop is that it manages the payments online,” says Semler. The system, through the online payment processing service Stripe, automatically distributes customer payments to each individual farmer within the group order. Product is paid for before delivery, which Semler says is a benefit to farmers, but calls for new logistical problem-solving like how to hold and package inventory for individual customers. Some farmers get creative with labels and personal notes as part of their customer service while others fill orders in simple bags.

All FarmDrops require commercial farmers insurance to join but, other than that, they are open to any local producer. Farmers set their own prices and take photos and write descriptions of each product and can link to their contact information and farm story. For participating farmers there is a fee for use of the software and a credit card fee, so they see around 90-92% of their retail price.

Customers pay a $5 distribution fee, which goes to the market hub’s managerial costs. For Central Maine FarmDrop about 50% goes to the farmers that deliver orders, the rest covers advertising and marketing, coolers and other supplies. FarmDrops are run by nonprofits, like Healthy Acadia which runs Mount Desert Island’s, so the customer order fees can go to nonprofit programs, supporting things like a delivery truck or a produce gleaner position, says Semler.

The business itself is primarily supported by grants right now, says Semler, who also acts as a consultant for food security organizations that partner with farmers and food businesses to help them reduce food waste, hosts a podcast called “What is American Food?” and works on gleaning projects in the Downeast region, including founding the Maine Gleaning Network.

Other Online Models

Most FarmDrop participants, even the less tech-savvy ones, report while there’s an initial learning curve, they find FarmDrop easy to adopt and maintain. But it is not the only option out there. Maine Highlands Farmers’ Market found a simple website that worked for their online pivot.

Last spring Brooke Isham of Land of Milk and Honey (LOMAH) got together with other farmers from the East Sangerville Grange to think about how they could safely provide products to their local community. Moving to an online platform, which had the advantage of fewer hands touching product and no money exchanged for a more sanitary process, seemed like the best idea. Plus Isham, who raises dairy sheep and sells sheep’s milk soap and bath and body products on her own online store and at a few regional farmers’ markets, had past experience participating in an online multi-farmer market in Michigan.

After many long meetings, the group officially came together to form Maine Highlands Farmers’ Market and decided on a website and open hours that would allow enough time to harvest and get orders together – the store is open for online orders Saturdays and Sundays 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and customers pick up orders on Tuesdays from 4 to 6 p.m. at Dover-Foxcroft’s American Legion Hall. Isham was fortunate to have a friend knowledgeable in websites to help create mainehighlandsfarmersmarket.com, a basic WordPress site that uses a plug-in called Product Vendors, which allows customers to buy from different farmers with PayPal and then automatically disperses payments to the correct farmer for each order.

They have four participating farmers – including MOFGA-certified Marr Pond Farm and Helios Horsepower Farm – with a few others interested. Isham says the more the merrier, but they are focused on well-rounded offerings. She says the market has been easy to maintain and runs smoothly. Farmers drop off orders then leave, and they each take turns staffing the pick-up.

Some farmers found benefits in opening their own online stores. When Snakeroot Organic Farm of Pittsfield became a member of Central Maine FarmDrop in March of 2020, it inspired them to start an online store through their own Weebly-powered website.

Snakeroot, which sells mixed organic vegetables, fruits, perennials and herbs, first trialed a method of sales for their seedlings using Google Docs forms, in which customers could pre-order and then pay and pick up at either the Waterville or Orono farmers’ markets or at their farm. Snakeroot received over 240 orders from 155 customers, many of whom were new.

“We were pleasantly surprised at the success of this approach, but it did have some shortcomings,” says Tom Roberts, owner of Snakeroot. One drawback to the Google forms, he says, was that customers could not prepay. He discovered that the digital payment service Square, which they used for farmers’ market sales, had the ability to create an online store that connected to their existing account.

Tom Roberts of Snakeroot Organic Farm tends to his seedlings this spring. Photo by Catie Joyce-Bulay

Roberts notes that it took a significant amount of time to get the online store up and running last spring. “However, once this initial setup is done, maintaining the store is almost trivial while orders and payments begin to flow in,” says Roberts.

Costs and Benefits

While Roberts, who has been selling at farmers’ markets since 1980, likes the idea of the online store and plans to continue participating in Central Maine FarmDrop, he is quick to note that he doesn’t consider it a farmers’ market.

“Some of the essential parts of a farmers’ market include the experience of shopping face-to-face among a group of farmers and the relationships that thereby develop between shopper and farmer and among the attending farmers,” he says. “These aspects are exclusive to farmers’ markets.”

Isham also sees the lack of relationship-building with customers when marketing online. “You don’t get to mingle and talk as much,” says Isham. “Sometimes people weren’t intending to buy something but because they see you or drive by and see the market, they stop. It’s a fun place to hang out. So there’s not that same farmers’ market vibe [online].”

Another drawback of online sales is that the customer doesn’t have the ability to touch the product, feel a tomato for ripeness for example, says Isham, but she notes that with COVID-19 protocols in place those options went away last year at farmers’ markets, too.

Roberts points out that the relationship-building and socializing between farmers is also limited with online stores.

Reaching New Customers

There are some advantages to online stores that farmers’ markets can’t provide. They allow more flexibility in buying and opportunities for customers who don’t have schedules that allow them to shop at farmers’ markets or do not live near one.

“Folks can look over our products online, make their buying decisions in their own time and pay for everything even if it’s 2 a.m. on a Tuesday morning,” Roberts says.

Hulva sees FarmDrop as the next step in the online shopping trend. “This idea of grab-n-go has seeped into our consciousness as a new way to shop,” says Hulva, who likens it to the rise of drive-thrus. “Consumers are thinking ‘Walmart and Amazon were great, but now I can [shop online] locally.’”

For farmers who farm in communities with no existing farmers’ market, online shops are an opportunity to reach more customers in more locations.

“The farmer always thinks ‘I have to move to bigger markets,’” says Hulva. “Actually we’ve found that our niche is in the inefficiency. We’re doing something that no one else was able to do since we don’t need 100 bags to make it profitable. We are size-neutral.”

Maine Highlands Farmers’ Market echoes this sentiment. “Most of us participate in farmers’ markets farther away, and we could be feeding our community,” says Isham.

Brooke Isham (left) of LOMAH staffs the Maine Highlands Farmers’ Market pick-up in Dover-Foxcroft while customers get the products they ordered online. Photo courtesy of Maine Highland Farmers’ Market

Beyond ease of shopping are the time-saving elements embedded in the system. This means more time on the farm for farmers, and customers get the products often within a few hours of harvest, fresher than the grocery store and even the farmers’ market, where product might be driven long distances and then sit out in the sun, says Pulz.

The pre-ordering also means farmers don’t need to speculate on how much product to bring to market that day since they are delivering only what is already sold. This saves farmers money and reduces food waste (provided the farmers have another market for what’s ready to harvest).

Marketing into the Future

Online marketing options are here to stay. Many farmers who participated in these markets in 2020 continue using them this year and plan to after the pandemic.

This spring FarmDrop launched its newest iteration, which put all of the market locations into one database so customers can switch markets depending on where they are that week. It also allows producers to sell to more than one FarmDrop market with a single inventory. Semler says they plan to continue expanding across the country and also hopes to soon add an EBT option for customers on the website while also piloting this technology to make it available to anyone with a WordPress website, addressing one of the company’s goals – to create more equity in the local food system.

Isham and Roberts recommend selling at both in-person farmers’ markets and online.

“We think of our marketing as taking a modular approach, with our attendance at farmers’ markets having acted as a foundation that we build on,” says Roberts, who adds that marketing their produce consists of several parts, including “displaying/describing the product, making the sale, order fulfillment, and money deposits. Having an online store simply adds an additional and very efficient channel for these components.”

About the author: Catie Joyce-Bulay is a Winslow-based freelance writer focused on farms, craft beer and sustainable food systems. She has published in a variety of regional and national magazines. Connect with her on Twitter @catiejoycebulay.

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Pasture-Based Livestock Profitability

Holli Cederholm — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 19:50:17 +0000

By Holli Cederholm

In Bowdoinham, Maine, farmers Abby Sadauckas and Jake Galle of Apple Creek Farm raise a diverse mix of grass-based, certified organic livestock for eggs and meat, as well as value-added bone broths and pate, sold year-round at local farmers’ markets and a handful of retail outlets. Aspects of holistic management have informed the farm’s development, Sadauckas explained in her presentation on pasture-based livestock profitability at MOFGA’s 2020 Farmer to Farmer Conference in November.

The pair assumed management of Apple Creek Farm in 2014 from Galle’s parents, who founded it in 1985 with a flock of sheep and three kids – which Galle is the youngest of. In a video produced for the Bowdoinham Open Farm & Art Trail, showcased at the beginning of Sadauckas’ presentation, Galle said, “I grew up making hay in the fields that we still currently make hay out of with my dad and my brother and my sister and my mom.”

The “Home Farm,” as they call the land leased from Galle’s family, has 35 acres of pasture claimed from mixed woods and pine groves over the course of 40 years. In 2014, Sadauckas and Galle purchased 70 adjacent acres and began clearing 12 of them. Additionally, they lease 10 hayfields, totaling 60 acres, and 15 acres of pasture for rotational grazing.

Apple Creek Farm from above. Photo by Nathan Ellis of N-E Construction

Diversity on the Farm

Apple Creek Farm raises beef cows, chickens (for both eggs and meat), goats and sheep, and turkeys and geese for the holidays. “We’re able to manage the diversity of critters that we have because of the diversity of acreage. These different fields are good for different stuff,” said Sadauckas.

For example, their North American Cashmere goats are used to manage the woods and edge areas, helping to reclaim pasture from encroaching bittersweet. “The goats are a non-chemical method for controlling invasives,” said Sadauckas.

Broilers are predominantly raised in a 13-acre field that they cleared in 2011 at Home Farm. Like much of the land the farm utilizes, the soils have a USDA land capability designation of Class 6, which means they need careful management such as rotational grazing and lots of fertility. Chickens produce the needed fertility and help to spread it, too.

Most of the soils on the farm are stony and not well-drained. “Our strategy really is to add a ton of organic matter,” said Sadauckas.

This includes planting annual forages. Parcels of land that get “beat up,” like winter cow yards, are seeded to millet which can be used for warm-season grazing. For land recently taken out of forest, the farmers utilize no-till drilling to seed forage crops – adding species diversity to their grazing lands.

Holistic Management

When they started farming together, Sadauckas and Galle identified their values in order to provide a framework for their operation. Having holistic goals allows them to better assess opportunities and to prioritize investments on the farm, including “what to say no to,” said Sadauckas.

The goal of “being calm and not having stress” has heavily impacted decisions on the farm, such as undertaking a lot of financial planning to eliminate stress related to cashflow. The farm business is separate from their personal finances, and has been since they started farming in 2009. To avoid a stressful lifestyle, they set goals to not be out in the field late every night, to have time to relax and to take vacations.

Wanting to reduce stress also influences their livestock management practices more specifically. Identifying points of stress helped Sadauckas and Galle determine crucial infrastructure purchases, including a livestock trailer (to better control ideal times for loading livestock) and head gates (to improve upon their cattle-breeding setup). “These have been pretty invaluable in ensuring that we can handle the animals in a safe way,” said Sadauckas.

Strategic Marketing

They first joined the Brunswick winter market in 2011, and it remains the backbone of the farm’s marketing strategy today. By primarily selling their products in the winter, they were able to focus on production in the summer. They now market year-round and have scaled up farmers’ markets attendance to three days per week and also participate in the Merry Meeting Kitchen online food hub, where customers can order products for pick-up at Apple Creek Farm’s market booth, at Merry Meeting Kitchen or right at the farm

As proponents of nose-to-tail eating, they get everything back from the butcher – and sell it all. Their list of value-added offerings, processed using Turtle Rock Farm’s co-packing services, includes grass-fed fats, bone broth, and chicken liver pate and mousse. Having value-added products, and offering a range of items, helps to increase the total sales per customer, said Sadauckas. She noted that they spend a lot of time educating their customers so they know how to use the farm’s products, are happy with them and keep coming back for more.

“We strive to offer all our products on a year-round basis and are building out our production to match our market in southern Maine,” said Sadauckas.

Broilers

In 2011, Apple Creek Farm began raising broiler chickens in batches of 50 to sell as frozen, whole birds. They’ve since scaled up to batches of 200 and anticipate growing to 300 in 2021.

Two different chicken breeds selected for performance on pasture, Cornish Crosses and Red Bro, are sheltered in floorless hoop houses that get moved onto fresh grass every morning. The structures measure around 12-14 feet by 16 feet, and have roll-up sides and a covered door at each end. This design allows them to “catch that spring sunshine without that spring wind,” said Sadauckas.

The chickens are allowed to “day range” on pasture as they grow, but are shut into the houses at night to keep them safe from predators: like the farm’s resident family of great horned owls.

Sadauckas noted that the houses allow for more control of the broilers’ environment and, as a result, the birds grow better – they’re less susceptible to disease and hypothermia. The coops also mean an early start on production: Apple Creek Farm starts processing fresh birds for Memorial Day and continues processing 100 to 150 birds on a weekly basis through Labor Day.

To maximize profitability with chickens, they switched from selling only whole birds to selling cuts. “Boneless, skinless breasts are a very good seller and the price point we strive for gives us enough profit that in 2018 it covered our entire processing/slaughter bill for broilers,” said Sadauckas.

Feed, of course, is one of their biggest costs. They reduce this expense by buying grain in bulk and through using hanging feeders, sourced from Kuhl Corporation, that can be adjusted based on the birds’ age and size to reduce waste.

Apple Creek Farm uses moveable hoophouses to raise pastured broilers. Photo by Kristin Dillon/Blue Horse Photography

Laying Hens

Sadauckas and Galle rotate their flock of Bovan Red hens onto fresh pasture every week using a system of movable coops and flexible fencing. When cold weather hits, the hens are transferred to a 30-by-72-foot Rimol hoop house outfitted with rollaway nest boxes which collect the eggs in a drawer, keeping them relatively clean (thereby reducing labor).

The system was originally designed for 200 to 250 hens but they ended up with 500 16-week-old pullets when another farm changed their mind regarding a joint order. It proved a serendipitous mistake as Sadauckas cannot imagine going back to raising 200 hens. In terms of increased workload, there’s more eggs to wash – 500 hens yield 30 to 35 dozen per day – but otherwise it’s “essentially the exact same thing.”

Though in 2020, Apple Creek Farm kept on an older flock to meet increased eggs demands brought on by COVID-19, bringing their flock up to 900 hens yielding 70 to 75 dozen eggs daily. Having eggs consistently available has helped their farm’s cashflow and created wholesale opportunities with Morning Glory Natural Foods in Brunswick and Royal River Natural Foods in Freeport.

Laying hens also provide a lot of on-farm fertility, saving Apple Creek from having to import it at a premium as they continue to build the soils on their farm. Other savings come from purchasing supplies in bulk and reusing egg cartons. Though, as with broilers, profitability is largely maximized through feed.

They follow Jeff Mattocks’ recommendations for feeding based on stage-of-life. These rations help to achieve a goal of maintaining an 85% lay rate during the two or so years they keep each flock. As one group of layers age, they add a round of pullets and, after their eggs size up, retire the older hens – either selling them as backyard flocks or processing them into stew birds.

Cows

Apple Creek Farm is a cow-calf operation. In the fall of 2020, their six, primarily Angus-cross, brood cows birthed the first round of calves bred by artificial insemination on the farm; they switched from keeping a shared bull in 2018. “We are fall-calving because we have sheep and goats and chicks and all of these things happening in the spring,” said Sadauckas.

Calves are weaned in the spring at six-months-old and moved to leased pasture. Then finishing animals (which are raised for at least 24 months prior to slaughter) and brood cows are pastured together. Occasionally they will add goats to the same paddock. “They graze different things and they graze different heights,” said Sadauckas, noting that goats will snip off the heads of Queen Anne’s lace that the cows ignore.

The farmers add value to their beef operation through selling by the cut, and by offering sausage and hot dogs, in addition to ground beef. “We weren’t sure if our customers would be interested in the hot dogs, but they are and they appreciate knowing what’s in them,” said Sadauckas.

Sheep

Sheep have been around since the early days of Apple Creek. Galle’s parents started raising them in the 1980s, selecting animals based on wool quality. Sadauckas and Galle now focus on size. They have introduced both a Clun Forest ram and a Bluefaced Leicester to their mixed breed flock and are especially impressed with the genetics introduced by the latter. “We’ve seen, just in one season, what that change in genetics can do to increase carcass size,” said Sadauckas.

Each year they retain 10 to 12 lambs to build their breeding stock. They aim for 50 ewes total, with expansion limited by the size of their barn which was built for housing 20 animals, along with their winter feed, by Galle’s parents. They intend to build a new barn in the next year or two so they can scale up to their target number of sheep and goats.

To add value to their sheep enterprise, they process between 25 and 50 sheepskins a year and sell them at farmers’ markets and online.

Jake Galle and Abby Sadauckas of Apple Creek Farm. Photo by Kristin Dillon/Blue Horse Photography

Goats

Sadauckas started raising goats in Unity before she started farming with Galle. She considered raising Boer goats but was dissuaded by a lack of available breeding stock in the state. Inspired by mentors at both Springtide Cashmere in Bremen and Black Locust Farm in Washington, she settled on North American Cashmere goats instead. She knew that she could sell the cashmere back to a breeder and also knew that she would be able to source a buck for growing her herd.

Apple Creek Farm now keeps two bucks, which they run with their sheep in the off-season to avoid unwanted breeding, and 25 does. Similar to sheep, they want to expand their goat herd to meet market demand – they sell goat meat by the cut in addition to fiber – and are working on new management systems, including the addition of a hoop house for winter shelter.

Turkey & Geese

Both turkey and geese, while fairly easy to manage, are expensive for the farm to raise. Goslings cost $15 each to buy in, and the farmers have found that they need to sell goose meat for $12 per pound to offset their costs. This, in addition to limited processing availability for waterfowl, has caused them to eliminate production in certain years.

Turkeys, Sadauckas noted, require a certain scale to achieve profitability, in part, because of the cost of the poults: for Apple Creek Farm that’s a minimum of 200 birds annually. Similar to other poultry on the farm, the birds are pastured using movable hoop houses.

Largely destined as the centerpieces of holiday meals, turkeys create a level of stress that other animals on the farm do not. “The marketing is challenging because for every turkey there’s a person and every person has a family that they’re going to feed that turkey to,” said Sadauckas. “The expectations for this bird are incredibly high.”

It’s also challenging to get the sizing right. “It’s the only thing we try not to grow as big as we can,” said Sadauckas.

The stress of marketing holiday turkeys doesn’t fit into the farm’s holistic management goals so they’re exploring other models including cooperative marketing. Another model they like is raising the animals for ground turkey, rather than whole birds, which eliminates the seasonality of the market – there’s demand for their turkey year-round.

Like with all of the pasture-based meats offered by Apple Creek Farm, their customers can taste the difference. “We always joke that the secret ingredient to our meat is lots of fresh grass and sunshine,” said Sadauckas.

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Maine Harvest Bucks

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:42 +0000

By Heather Omand

In 2015 MOFGA, as one partner in the Maine Local Food Access Network (MLFAN), embarked on a collaborative initiative to increase access in Maine to local, healthy foods. The MLFAN developed Maine Harvest Bucks (MHB), a nutrition incentive to low-income consumers that is available at farmers’ markets, farm stands, community supported agriculture (CSA) farms and natural food stores selling local produce. With MHB, shoppers using Supplemental Nutrition Access Program benefits (SNAP, formerly called food stamps) gain access to healthy, local food and receive bonus local fresh produce, stretching limited benefits much further. Increasing the number of consumers who buy local food contributes to the growth of our local economy, creates community connections and facilitates healthy eating!

MOFGA has managed the CSA component of MHB by working primarily with certified organic CSA farms to reduce share prices by 50 percent or more. Consumers with SNAP pay half the normal share price, but the farmer still receives the full value thanks to grant funding made possible by the MLFAN, Maine Farmland Trust, Wholesome Wave and USDA.

In the 2015 season, the first year of the grant, the six participating CSA farms served over 75 low-income individuals and families in Maine for a total of more than $17,000 in incentives distributed. Most participating farmers had prior experience working with either MOFGA or other local nonprofits in offering food access initiatives.

The 2016 summer CSA share season brought exciting opportunities and new challenges to the second year of the three-year grant. Not all of the farmers who participated in 2015 returned, but eight new farms came on board for a new total of 11 CSA farms participating in the MHB program. So far, over 80 low-income individuals and families have benefited from the program, with another 30 expected to benefit over the winter. (One participating farm’s biggest CSA season is November through February.) Of the 10 farms participating in the summer of 2016, three have seen low-income shareholders drop out partway through the season due to a reduction in their SNAP benefits, and seven farms were unable to fill the full number of reduced price shares they had available. Some of these challenges are due to the nature of offering MHB in new venues and include the need for education about the CSA model and the time needed to get the word out. However, we know anecdotally that at least some of these challenges are due to changes in the SNAP program.

The number of Maine people enrolled in SNAP decreased by more than 31,000 (14 percent) from September 2014 to September 2016. We can hope that this is due partly to former participants’ improved circumstances, but we know that important policy changes also occurred in Maine within that timeframe. In 2015, the LePage administration added an asset test for childless adults to the requirements for SNAP eligibility, making people ineligible if they have more than $5,000 in cash or property, including savings accounts, snowmobiles, boats, motorcycles, ATVs or other valuables. This affected about 8,600 SNAP recipients. Aroostook County alone, where a snowmobile can be a key mode of winter transportation, saw a 6.2 percent reduction in the amount of SNAP benefits distributed from March 2015 to March 2016.

In early 2016, a second LePage initiative affected SNAP eligibility requirements. Over 12,000 childless, unemployed adults lost their SNAP benefits in March due to a change demanding that these individuals either work part time, participate in state job training programs or volunteer for a certain number of hours per week – regardless of transportation issues, the availability of such training programs in their region, or the fact that multiple counties in Maine were considered “labor surplus” areas at the time (areas with a significant imbalance between the availability of jobs and the number of people willing to work).

While it is impossible to prove that changes in SNAP program regulations affected MHB participation at CSA farms, they likely contributed. United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Tim Vilsack has criticized LePage directly for his changes to Maine SNAP eligibility requirements, while Vilsack has also attributed the lowest figures on national record for food insecurity among children to the efficacy of the SNAP program. In 2015 and 2016, several studies concluded that the long-term impacts of SNAP are crucial to a strong safety net that not only “reduces poverty in the immediate term, it also reduces the number of people who need that safety net over the long term,” according to economist Sandra Black, Ph.D.

According to the Maine Federation of Farmers’ Markets (an MLFAN partner), those studies found that children who benefit from SNAP in utero and early childhood are 16 percent less likely to be obese as adults and 18 percent more likely to graduate from high school; that SNAP lifted 4.7 million people, including over 2 million children, out of poverty in a single year; that SNAP access during childhood was directly linked in one study to increased economic self-sufficiency in adulthood, especially among women; and that in more than 80 percent of SNAP recipient households with at least one working-age, non-disabled adult, someone worked in the year immediately before or after receiving SNAP benefits.

MOFGA is excited to continue participating in the MHB program and facilitating its availability at Maine CSA farms. We believe in investing in Maine people and increasing access to healthy, organic food in a way that benefits farm viability. If you have questions about the program, please contact me.

Heather Omand is MOFGA’s organic marketing and business coordinator. You can contact her at 207-568-4142 or homand@mofga.org

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Capturing Farm Sales on the Web

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:40 +0000

Simon and Jane Frost of Thirty Acre Farm. English photo

At MOFGA’s 2017 Farmer to Farmer Conference, participants learned about expanding their markets through online sales from Simon Frost of Thirty Acre Farm in Whitefield, Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Family Farm in Bridgewater and Theresa Gaffney of Highland Blueberry Farm and Highland Organics in Stockton Springs.

Thirty Acre – Selling Glass Jars of Fermented Veggies

Thirty Acre Farm raises mixed vegetables that Jane and Simon Frost ferment into sauerkraut, kimchi and other products. They put up their first website about seven years ago without anticipating using it for sales, as they were selling primarily at farmers’ markets and stores. A few years later someone suggested that they have an online store.

They changed from an informational web platform to Squarespace to make that work, and web sales, with no Google advertising, grew to $11,000 in eight months last year. (They shut down the store each summer.) They are now looking at the web more carefully as a sales tool.

Squarespace, Frost said, was easy to set up, enables online sales and credit card processing, and is great for a service-oriented business; but it’s hard to track where sales come from and how people are getting to your website. They are now moving to Shopify as a marketing tool to get people to their website and, once there, getting people to buy their products.

Shopify is built for e-commerce, said Frost, with built-in metrics showing how people get to your website, and built-in promotion codes (e.g., free shipping for first-time buyers, or discounts on oversupplied items). It’s not made for blogging. It has a built-in credit card system, and if someone abandons his or her cart, Shopify immediately notifies you, and you can give that customer a discount code and encourage purchases.

“We want to make it easy for our customers to find us, so if we make a connection at the farmers’ market, they don’t just forget about us when they go back to Boston,” said Frost. “It’s about building momentum on all these facets and then adding the convenience of the web.”

He is now looking at how to use Google advertising and plans to try to use hooks on the new website that attract customers.

Shipping is very expensive, Frost noted. Thirty Acre Farm products are in glass jars, since no alternatives to glass worked well. On Tuesdays they take jars to Mail It 4 U (in Bath and Damariscotta), which packs and ships them via priority mail, with safe delivery guaranteed. The average value of an order is about $65, including shipping.

(Nicolas Lindholm, attending the session, said he ships in Green Cell foam, an eco-friendly, biodegradable, corn-based, non-GMO, American-made, rigid foam sold by KTM Industries [https://www.greencellfoam.com/], passing the cost on to customers. His Blue Hill Berry Company’s summer customers order from its website in winter.)

Frost got a value-added producer grant and is working on labels with Portland-based Pulp + Wire – a fast, thorough, knowledgeable company that specializes in food products, said Frost.

Wood Prairie: Mail Order and Web Sales

Wood Prairie Family Farm has 56 acres in MOFGA-certified organic field production, with 40 acres in a four-year rotation: 10 in potatoes, 10 in grain, 10 in sod and 10 in cover crop. With the average farm in Aroostook County being 500 acres, “the thought of a 10-acre potato farm selling in Aroostook County is a laughable thing,” said Gerritsen.

Wood Prairie got into mail order because the quality of some of the seed coming from Aroostook County was questionable. “We thought if we, in the center of Aroostook County, can’t find excellent, conventionally grown potatoes, maybe there’s a niche for quality, organic seed potatoes. We advertised in Organic Gardening magazine. We were the only game in town then. We could name our prices based on the real cost of production. People were anxious to get organic potatoes.” The family farm also grows wet-seeded vegetable crops (tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.).

So Jim and Megan Gerritsen created their first mail-order catalog 30 years ago, when 80 percent of their orders came through the U.S. mail with a check for payment, and about 20 percent were phone calls. “We had an 800 number before LL Bean had an 800 number,” said Gerritsen.

“There’s still an important place for catalogs,” said Gerritsen, since some gardeners are less computer savvy and more traditional than the general population. But about 15 years ago they saw the need for a web presence in order to survive.

They started with an unstable, off-the-shelf mail-order manager company, which allowed up to 1,000 customers before charging more. “It was not a good company,” said Gerritsen – nor were the computer experts hired next to create a custom web store for Wood Prairie.

Because web sales require use of credit cards, Paypal or Square, Gerritsen advised setting up something very secure.

“Our computers were hacked when OSGATA [the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association] sued Monsanto,” he said. “To protect our business, we have a high level of security. Employees can’t use our computers for their own email, and I’m now isolated from the network.”

Wood Prairie’s website is PCI compliant: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, explained Gerritsen, is an information security standard for organizations that handle major credit cards. Off-the-shelf platform creators have worked with the banks to set up this security, said Gerritsen. “Before becoming fully PCI compliant, we would get letters from credit card processors threatening to shut down our ability to accept credit card payment during peak season.”

Wood Prairie belongs to the Direct Gardening Association (DGA), a trade group for retailers selling green goods and hard goods directly to customers, and a good way to meet vendors offering services that a mail order company needs. Through DGA, Gerritsen learned about the web platform CommerceV3 and set that up about 12 years ago.

Gerritsen said readers would be hard pressed in most instances to know what seed catalog or gardening magazine they were looking at if the front page were removed, because they all look alike. “One of the rules in marketing,” he noted, “is that if you failed to differentiate yourself from your competition, then you were bound by the terms established by your competition. So we have worked to create a down-to-earth, homey, family farm catalog, with about 100 testimonials in each issue. The font matches the flavor of the catalog. That’s what we tried to extend to our web presence. We brag up our Maine location throughout the catalog. We want people to think of us as ‘Maine’ when they go back from vacation to their jobs in New Jersey.”

A website should make ordering easy, said Gerritsen, adding that Amazon sets the high standard. Also, “If as a customer you don’t see a secure-transaction symbol on the website, go somewhere else.”

For $6,000 annually, Gerritsen signed up with Trust Pilot, which verifies purchases by people who offer reviews and ratings on Wood Prairie’s website. “We plaster our [five-star] rating all over our website,” he said.

Now 75 percent of Wood Prairie’s orders come by internet; 20 by phone, 1 by fax and 4 percent by mail. The catalog, printed by DGA member Schmidt Printing in Minnesota, drives customers to the website. The catalog costs 10 cents to print and 29 cents to bulk mail. The farm’s average order is about $93.

The USDA organic label appears five times on the home page of the Wood Prairie website, and the words “certified organic” are repeated often.

“We only sell certified organic seed and food,” said Gerritsen. “That’s part of our branding. [Customers] don’t have to search for what’s organic because it’s all organic and has been for 30 years.”

Potato postcards with label art reminiscent of that on fruit crates from the ’20s and ’30s appear in the catalog and online for each seed potato variety. “The challenge we faced 30 years ago was turning a plain Jane potato into something people would be willing to pay for in the mail,” said Gerritsen.

He advised having a simple, clean checkout process. “Anything that confuses or delays customers is a reason for them to jump to another site.”

FedEx and the post office ship their products.

Social media also attracts customers, said Gerritsen. On Wood Prairie’s Facebook page he advocates for organic and criticizes Monsanto, trying to get out the message “that when it comes to organic, we’re the Maine family farm offering good seed … this is our life, we’re committed to it, you can trust us.”

Alisa Meggison of Green Sky Development in Sidney, Maine, does Wood Prairie’s pay per click campaign for $6,000 per year. “This is one area we’ve decided it pays to have a specialist,” said Gerritsen. “They track how much we’re paying on each word, which are the valuable words, and ROI [return on investment].”

Gerritsen also emails customers a newsletter every other week, usually with one article on potatoes, one on organic, one addressing issues (e.g., with Monsanto) and with a section answering customers’ questions.

The Gerritsens also joined a cooperative database called Wiland Direct in Colorado, which has 120 million addresses and tracks the shopping patterns of people based on their purchases. “We contribute our mailing list along with our transactions,” said Gerritsen. “We get back 10,000 names per year, and from these we mail catalogs to new prospects.”

The farm’s web sales are about $300,000 to $325,000; miscellaneous sales are another $125,000. “We used to spend $20,000 a year on space ads before the internet days,” said Gerritsen.

Highland Organics Online

Theresa Gaffney was unable to attend this Farmer to Farmer session but provided her notes.

To assess her market, Gaffney typed search words into Google for her product(s), including “tea,” “organic,” “blueberry,” “wild blueberry,” “blueberry tea,” “blueberry powder,” “dried blueberries,” etc., and then critiqued potential competitors’ sites in order to grow her online look.

She advised knowing your monthly and yearly costs for a site designer, host, shipping and credit card fees. “It isn’t just about spending dollars, it is also about spending time,” noted Gaffney – time setting up and promoting your site.

Gaffney hired Deborah Newman of Petite Taway Inc. (207-991-1451; https://www.petitetaway.com) to design her website using the Wix platform. Gaffney notes that Wix adheres to Google’s latest requirements; integrates marketing tools such as a blog, which, when published, is sent to newsletter subscribers; and has an integrated email signup, newsletter functionality and social media feeds. Its integrated shopping cart allows multiple payment options. Forum and Event widgets enable your community to interact with you. It also offers site analytics.

Petite Taway, according to Gaffney, has competitive pricing, knows the issues facing the Maine business environment, is always available to answer questions, responds quickly, is highly rated by clients, has extensive knowledge of marketing techniques and social media strategizing, and will train people remotely to use the Wix platform.

Once your site is up, visit it often and act like a customer. Know that mistakes will happen as you start, and remember that a satisfied customer is a returning customer.

“For me,” said Gaffney, “customers come first. Make a great and lasting impression online because there is no face-to-face interaction.”

Highland Organic customers can pay by credit card through Square or with a PayPal account. Gaffney uses Square at farmers’ markets to track sales and items. She tracks her wholesale invoicing through PayPal – the only shopping cart option available when she started. Offering credit card sales through Square increased her online sales significantly, but many people rely on PayPal’s buyer protection, she noted. “If I did not offer that option, I believe that 30 to 40 percent of my online sales would not be shopping with me.”

She ships through the PayPal tool, as it is the best option right now for USPS shipping. (Wix is just beginning to offer shipping but is not quite there yet.)

To grow her online presence, she now uses Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (and SnapChat, with results to be determined).

“The key is to be on the first page in a customer’s search criteria or keywords,” she noted. She learned about meta tags through Deb Newman. “Search words or keywords are words that Google and others would recognize in your website content that will link your site with a potential customer,” Gaffney explained. When she Googles the word “blueberries,” her business comes up as number seven on search engines; “blueberry tea” brings Highland to number three; and “organic blueberry tea” is number one.

The right web address “is everything,” said Gaffney. Hers are www.organicblueberrytea.com and .net,
which morphed into www.organicblueberryproducts.com and .net as she added new products, and now
www.AtasteofwildMaine.com and .net since she offers more than blueberry products and tea. She still maintains organicblueberrytea.com and .net because this is where it all began, and she would lose her ratings if she dropped it – which is why she suggests choosing your web address wisely. “Otherwise you have to learn your lesson like I did and maintain several web addresses.”

Regarding videos and pictures, Gaffney thinks that people increasingly are not taking the time to read through content when they click online, “so use pictures to say what you want to write a book about or use quick videos (under 30 seconds) to get a point across.” However, “do not neglect the customer who does take the time to read information on your site or wants more details. Do make it available somewhere on your site and easy to access, or under tabs.”

Gaffney ships through USPS because her products are light and go around the world. USPS offers several options, including first class or priority mail (with tracking), domestic and international, and it offers free shipping boxes and some other materials. She has a business Click & Ship rate. She also uses USPS because it is very convenient through her PayPal account, and she has a working relationship with her postal carrier, who will come to the farm every day packages need to be picked up. She suggested talking to different carriers and other businesses shipping products to see what might work best for your business.

Finally, listen to your customers, said Gaffney. One reason she uses Wix.com is that it simplifies getting information to customers and getting customers’ feedback to you.

“Your customers can help guide you to making the best online shopping experience possible, but you need to ask for feedback and listen to what they are saying rather than taking their feedback as a personal rejection of you and your product. Reward those who give feedback or are first time shoppers; Wix.com can help you do that automatically. When a customer places their first order online, Wix will automatically generate your prepared email to them after you designate a set time. Our prepared email states, ‘Special Offer! Thank you for your recent purchase and We do hope you enjoyed your taste of wild Maine! Just in case you did … We would like to offer you a discount on your next online purchase! You are invited to reply to this email and when you do, we will send you a coupon that you can use towards your next purchase with us. We look forward to hearing from you!'” Remember, said Gaffney, everyone loves a gift!

The post Capturing Farm Sales on the Web appeared first on Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners.

Enterprise Budgets

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:36 +0000

By Heather Omand

Four MOFGA-certified organic Maine farms – three machinery-powered and one horse-powered – participated in 2015 in a carrot enterprise budget project. Results are presented here, with the horse-powered farm enterprise budget separate due to substantial differences in costs versus the machinery-powered farms.

Some farms tracked certain pieces of information more successfully than others, so numbers in the machine-powered enterprise budget don’t always represent information from all three farms, but they always represent information from at least two.

The farmers in this project began by using a labor tracking system developed by Chris Blanchard of Purple Pitchfork consulting services. Farmers from two of the four farms valued the system, one ended up tracking labor with a smartphone instead, and one preferred and used existing recordkeeping systems. Some believed that they did not capture their labor or yields with 100 percent accuracy but that they captured enough information to generate a useful enterprise budget.

These are basic enterprise budgets intended to give farmers baseline information to evaluate the profit potential of scaling up carrot production, of producing certified organic carrots, or to compare with an individual farm’s enterprise budget. The farmers varied significantly in labor and receipt costs. The budgets demonstrate that farmers’ production choices, their efficiency of labor and labor systems, and their crop management (weediness, etc.) substantially affect an individual farm’s costs and cannot be extrapolated safely based on averaged/aggregated information (such as these budgets) when making major farm decisions. They should not substitute for creating enterprise budgets specific to individual production and business realities.

The “net profit” in these enterprise budgets, configured both for the total square feet represented and per square foot, does not include overhead costs such as utilities required to power the business, land costs, and so on. In his book “The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook,” Richard Wiswall’s overhead costs are 36 percent of his total crop costs for carrots. Extrapolating from this percentage suggests that overhead costs might be $150.27 in the machine-powered budget and $488.74 in the horse-powered budge – but these are rough estimates.

The budgets also do not include costs of packaging carrots for sale, such as bags, rubber bands or ties, labels or boxes. These are important costs to factor in when considering scaling up to sell to larger retail or wholesale markets. Maine Farm Supply, a buying co-op started for Maine farmers in 2015, could help in estimating or lowering these costs.

Regarding scaling up, note that the price per bunch used in the machine-powered budget was $2.75 and in the horse-powered budget, $3.42, so the net profit per acre would be, for the machine-powered budget, $29,621, and for the horse-powered, $16,553, before overhead and packaging costs. However, few producers will find wholesale buyers willing to pay these prices. Bringing the price down to $2.00 per bunch, net profit per acre drops to $16,553 for the machine-powered budget and $1,307 for the horse-powered budget. Depending on the wholesale market, prices closer to $1.00 per bunch or per pound may be more likely.

To receive an Excel version of this budget to tailor to your own situation, to try Blanchard’s system on your farm to track labor, or for other organic business information, please email me at homand@mofga.org.

About the author: Heather Omand is MOFGA’s organic marketing and business coordinator.

The post Enterprise Budgets appeared first on Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners.

Four Steps To Mothball Your Farm or Business

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:30 +0000

By Cheryl Wixson

There are certain times in the life of your farm or business when circumstances beyond your control – such as the death of your partner, health of a family member, loss of a facility due to fire or other disaster – require that the business enterprise cease operation for a period of time. In the business sense of the word, this option is characterized as mothballing.

Mothballing is defined as the practice of putting functional equipment and/or facilities into storage so that they are no longer being operated but can be used again in the future. A number of reasons exist for mothballing, the primary being that its keeps equipment under the ownership and control of the business while retiring it from current operation.

This spring, our value-added, MOFGA certified organic specialty food company was notified that we had less than 30 days to relocate our business and find a new aggregation, storage and processing facility. Given the size that we had grown our company based upon the capacity of this facility, this was a situation in which circumstances were beyond our control. Rather than close the business or temporarily relocate the production facility, we determined that mothballing the production line was the best alternative.

A decision during a critical life path moment is difficult, but organic production encourages people to think in terms of system health and management for resilience and dynamic equilibrium. In the mothballing process, we used a holistic systematic approach based loosely upon the NOFA publication “Whole-Farm Planning, Ecological Imperatives, Personal Values and Economics,” written by Elizabeth Henderson and Karl North, with these four steps:

Inventory

Liquidate

Consolidate

Regroup

The first step is to perform to an inventory, which includes people, assets (both physical and mental, property and equipment) and liabilities. You need to know both the farm and business assets and liabilities. Assets include raw ingredients, finished product, stored product, materials, seeds, equipment, land and more. If you practice whole farm planning, this may be only an update. List everything and be thorough. You’ll need the information later!

Be sure to include people in your inventory for both their assets and resources. In our situation, we had numerous offers to help with moving or selling product that were invaluable in the transition process. People are a fundamental part of holistic management; suppliers, CSA members, other businesses and farmers are all part of the greater whole of the biological communities and ecosystems and are important resources.

Liability assessment is also critical. What are the bills, notes, mortgages and payment terms? When mothballing parts of the business, you will need to generate enough income to be current on all liabilities.

Which leads to the second step: Whenever possible, liquidate. Cash is king. Sell equipment, inventory, raw materials and goods to be used in manufacturing. Cash allows business flexibility and allows the business to continue to make payments on all notes and mortgages if necessary.

Next, consolidate. Square footage equals storage equals money. The more you own and the more you sprawl, the more it costs. For example, because of our increased efficiencies with economy of scale, we were purchasing jars by the pallet and had nine pallets of jars in inventory. Although they were sold for less than the purchase price, the sale generated needed cash and consolidated inventory, reducing the required storage space.

When consolidating, group things together and organize them. Keep a written inventory. All records must be kept together and be easily accessible!

Once the part of the business is mothballed, regroup. This is a time for evaluation and setting goals. Given this new set of circumstances, what are your life goals? How does the business or farm move you toward or away from your goal?

Henderson and Karl recommend that you test your decisions based upon three questions:

Value: Does the farm or business bring about the quality of life that you value?

Forms of production: Does the farm or business help you succeed in the things you want to do in life?

Sustainability: Will this farm or business lead you toward or away from the kind of community and neighborhood you desire?

Organic production and farming and managing for sustainability is a balancing act. Unpredictable events happen. Our objectives change with time and maturation. A resilient farm or business uses the holistic planning and decision-making process to systematize our instinctive sense of the ways of the universe so that we can produce for a healthier present and a more peaceful future.

Cheryl Wixson is MOFGA’s organic marketing consultant. In May, when Coastal Farms and Foods in Belfast closed, she mothballed the production line of Cheryl Wixson’s Kitchen. She welcomes your thoughts and questions at Cheryl@mofga.org.

The post Four Steps To Mothball Your Farm or Business appeared first on Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners.

Wholesale

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:26 +0000

Wholesale Success is a guide to wholesale marketing, including building relationships, crop planning and pricing, negotiating contracts, postharvest handling, cooling, packing and more.

By Cheryl Wixson

The market demand for local and organic food is growing. In 1990, U.S. organic food sales were $1 billion; by 2011, they had grown to $31 billion. Certified-organic cropland has grown by 15 percent, and organic has been the fastest growing sector in the food industry since 1990.

According to the USDA, local food sales are also growing quickly, and demand for local food has become a hot trend in the food industry. Value-added food processors are increasing their purchases, institutional buyers such as schools, universities and hospitals want more local foods, and distributors are seeking more locally grown produce.

This increase in market demand represents a tremendous opportunity for farmers who have the capacity to scale up their operations and enter into the wholesale market. However, for many produce growers who primarily direct market through CSAs, farmers’ markets and farm stands, these wholesale markets present an entirely different set of opportunities and obstacles.

Producers may find that the stability and high-volume sales of wholesale markets increase the economic viability of their farm. Some may choose to diversify their sales by keeping the most profitable or convenient direct market sales and adding wholesale accounts once the farm reaches a certain size.

A book recently added to the MOFGA library, Wholesale Success: A Farmer’s Guide to Food Safety, Selling, Postharvest Handling, and Packing Produce, Third Edition, edited by Jim Slama and Atina Diffley and published by FamilyFarmed.org, provides an excellent roadmap for producers interested in developing wholesale markets.

The Guide walks the producer through the considerations in entering wholesale markets, including building relationships, crop planning and pricing, negotiating contracts or grower agreements and calculating return on investment. It also helps farmers build the skills that are keys to success in the market, including postharvest handling, cooling, packing, the buyer-seller relation, USDA grade standards and food safety. The goal of the Guide is to help farmers manage new, profitable business relationships, increase product quality, maximize shelf life and successfully manage wholesale sales.

Inside Wholesale Success

The manual is sensibly organized into sections on preharvest preparation, harvesting, cooling and curing, cleaning and drying, sorting and packing, storage and transportation, and packing shed design. The section on food safety covers the basics of developing a farm food safety plan, and of farm and operation considerations, including agricultural water, animals and pest control, soil amendments and manure, and packing house design and activities. Although GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) is the book’s model farm food safety plan while MOFGA recommends a HACCP-based plan (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points), the information presented is relevant and important.

The Guide’s profiles of more than 100 crops, from apples to winter squash, are comprehensive, with detailed postharvest information, general harvest tips, quality descriptions, packaging standards, storage conditions, and the most common postharvest pests and diseases.

The Guide has numerous references, endnotes and links to USDA resources.

Cheryl Wixson, P.E., in 2013 was MOFGA’s agricultural engineer and food safety specialist.

The post Wholesale appeared first on Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners.

Focus on Marketing

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:26 +0000

Broadturn Farm posts photos on Instagram, Facebook and on its website for maximum exposure to social media. Photos courtesy of Broadturn Farm.

How can you connect with customers through social media? Farmers highlighted their storytelling strategies at a marketing session at MOFGA’s 2013 Farmer to Farmer Conference.

Stacy Brenner and John Bliss of Broadturn Farm in Scarborough grow MOFGA certified organic vegetables to about 180 CSA members and to some retail and wholesale customers, and they sell cut flowers through a flower CSA and for events, including weddings. They also host weddings at their farm. Their communication tools include these:

https://www.broadturnfarm.com/ – This site includes their blog.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Broadturn-Farm/141029388206

https://instagram.com/florabliss (https://instagr.in/u/florabliss)

https://www.meetyourfarmer.org/broadturn-farm/ – A short film by Maine Farmland Trust about Broadturn Farm

https://www.taprootmag.com/ – Brenner writes for this magazine.

“What are we selling with our story?” asked Bliss. “You’re always selling your brand. Storytelling is the most powerful form of marketing we have access to.”

You can tell your story in depth through a newsletter, such as Sprouting Acres’ at https://www.sproutingacres.com/blog, and essays, such as https://www.ladybugletter.com/?p=138. Broadturn’s blog enables them to tell their story in some depth, while Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest tell a shorter story.

These stories should be positive, said Bliss – even in a wet year like 2009, with its rampant late blight, although Brenner added, “Personality is the most important element. Readers want to be with you through your hard times … emotional openness” is important. In 2009 they highlighted their new kittens to contrast with the bad weather. Another post showed them building their interns’ housing. They try to blog weekly during the growing season and less often in winter.

Draft horses are part of the story and allure of North Branch Farm in Monroe. Photo by Elsie Gawler.

“Photos are central to our story,” said Bliss. “The text is just a few words. The real meat is the photos.”

Regarding photos, “I can’t stress enough how great the iPhone is,” said Brenner. “It takes incredible pictures, short videos, and you can post them immediately. The way water comes off your lettuce when you’re washing it, the sunlight … make a 5-second video [and] they’re going to want that lettuce.” She said posting videos through Instagram is easier than through Facebook.

Morning and evening – the “magic hour” of light – make nice shots, Brenner continued, and rainy days are great for interesting tones. Close-ups and details are always admired. “All that broccoli sitting in the back of the truck – there’s your hard work right there. It’s beautiful, all in one place. Remember what you are trying to sell.”

Photos of people working are also powerful.

“Get a good camera and a smartphone as part of your business expense,” said Brenner, and use Facebook and Instagram. “I take the phone, snap a shot, Instagram it and Facebook it at the same time.” She links Facebook posts to their blog.

Instagram (instagram.com) is a free way to post photos and short videos for your followers. “You have a fun opportunity to add filters,” said Brenner. Instagram “doesn’t necessarily increase your local sales,” she added, “but we’re looking for destination wedding people.”

An iPhone app lets you add text to a photo for Instagram, said Brenner. For instance, they may use a banner on an Instagram photo to advertise for help with their flower business.

“Farmers are observant,” said Bliss, “and have unlimited material to work with. We’re working with our hands. The people following us are spending a lot of time at a computer or have jobs in town” but want to be working with their hands. “We’re filling that experience gap.”

According to https://blog.bobbyrettew.com/tag/gen-x/ the current workforce includes 75 million baby boomers, 50 million Gen X-ers (born in the ‘60s-‘80s) and 70 million Gen Y-ers (born between 1980 and the early 2000s). Gen C (for “connectedness”) spans age groups and includes those who embrace digital media. (See https://www.briansolis.com/2012/04/meet-generation-c-the-connected-customer/) Bliss said Gen Y will be the bulk of their customers in a few years.

Think of these groups when telling your story, said Bliss, and be sure your story has truth, personality, plot and continuity (as described, for instance, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2013/02/05/5-secrets-to-using-storytelling-for-brand-marketing-success/).

Their Portland customers, Bliss continued, “are taking on the characteristics of that younger generation,” which has been described as yuppies with a protagonist identity. “They have the idea that they’re the most special person they know” … that they’re “a unique main character of their own story. We see this persona in a lot of our interns – the ‘me’ generation. If your life isn’t that exciting or interesting, you latch onto other people’s stories that are. That’s what Facebook is about – linking other people’s stories to yours.” That “Facebook image crafting” builds your identity and pushes your brand, said Bliss.

Ripley Farm’s Vegetable Gallery and recipes page is the most popular part of its website. Photos courtesy of Ripley Farm.

Broadturn’s posts don’t always relate to vegetable or flower products. “Sometimes it’s political,” said Stacy. “We may lose a few customers but we get more positive [than negative] feedback.”

In addition to the blog part of their website, static pages give the back story for the retail store, the farm, the farmers and their products. “Always have an easily accessible back story for new readers,” said Brenner.

When using social media, “It helps if you can engage yourself with a young person,” said Brenner. Their 17-year-old daughter set up their Instagram account and explained its etiquette. Many of their CSA members use Instagram, so Brenner photographs their produce while making dinner and tells followers, “Here’s what I’m making with the share.” She hashtags the name of their store and flower business so that their followers see and link to their posts. (A hashtag is a # symbol placed immediately before a key word so that posts relating to that word are categorized and searchable.)

“The ripple effect is helpful for us,” said Brenner.

“Your dream come true,” said Bliss, “is to have a dozen of your CSA members taking a picture the evening they take their share home, showing how they’re using it.”

Regarding others telling your story – filmmakers, photographers, journalists – Brenner said to be open but cautious. Maine Farmland Trust’s short “Know Your Farmers” video of their operation “turned out great,” while “another piece for a network news station took 2-1/2 days for 1 millisecond of national TV that did not affect our sales. We have since said ‘no’ to a lot of such media. Widespread attention doesn’t make your potatoes more valuable, and interviews take a lot of your time. Now if someone wants to do an interview, I say email me your questions and I’ll email my answers back. That way you know exactly what you said. Say you want to see the piece before it’s printed.”

Brenner is cooling to Pinterest, where “people create boards with a topic, such as ‘flowers in the spring that I love’ or ‘Mason jars with flowers on a runner of burlap.’ If you’re on a website, you can click a picture and it goes to Pinterest. People find a photo on the Internet, pin it on their board and share that board with me. I have all my brides send me their Pinterest link” if they have one. “We look at these when making up arrangements.” The problem: The photos are “almost all the same – as if your ideas were getting taken. It creates no originality. I don’t populate my Pinterest board any more.”

Farmer to Farmer participant Anna Mueller noted that many people link Pinterest to their Facebook and Instagram pages so that when they pin something, it appears on all three.

Mary Margaret Ripley and her husband, Eugene, raise vegetables at their Ripley Organic Farm in Dover-Foxcroft and sell through their CSA, at the Orono Farmers’ Market and wholesale. They tell their farm story at

Its windmill logo links Sylvester Manor to its past and to its community. Illustration courtesy of Sylvester Manor.

https://www.ripleyorganicfarm.com/ and

https://www.facebook.com/RipleyFarm.

“It’s easy to think that if you can grow nice vegetables, they’ll be able to sell themselves,” said Mary Margaret. That’s what she and Eugene thought when they started their farm in 2009.

“We grew a lot of nice vegetables but had trouble selling them all. The good news is that “people really do want to buy your stuff. Our job as farmers is to convince them that they can do that and to show them how easy it is to do that. That’s where telling your farm story comes in. And one of the best ways to tell your farm story is online.”

To craft that story, Mary Margaret said to ask

• What is your goal or purpose in using social media?

• Who is your audience and why do they care?

She offered these general tips:

• Always use images. Document everything you’re doing, then you can put it on your website and Facebook page. Ripley had a Farmer to Farmer participant photograph her while speaking so that she could show followers that she had presented at the conference.

• Be professional and excited about farming and your business.

• Do periodic “online farm tours” to get ideas based on other farm sites.

And she offered specific tips for websites:

• Use your website as your foundation, or “home,” for online marketing. Her site, built with Drupal (a free site), “is the main place where we’re telling our farm story. Everything else should refer back to it.” The first year of doing their CSA, they had 16 members and no online presence. The following year, with a website to promote their CSA, membership jumped to 40, and the following year to 60. They think they are shooting for 80 in 2014 and have added an online sign-up option this year. They found, through surveys, that the top reasons people support their CSA are quality and freshness, to support local farmers, and to know where their food comes from. “So we use those … in our storytelling,” including a blog with lots of pictures on their website. “We’re telling our story that we are a local farm that can be supported, and we can show you where your food comes from, if you want to buy from us.” Regarding quality and freshness, “One of the best ways to portray that is with pictures,” said Ripley. Their online vegetable gallery – their most popular page – shows the vegetables they grow and their quality and provides recipes for each. This helps retain CSA members. Another tab tells CSA members when to expect different vegetables in their CSA box and basic ways to retain freshness.

The current enthusiasm for hand lettering is alive and well on Sylvester Manor’s website. Graphic courtesy of Sylvester Manor.

• Be in charge of managing daily activity on the site and make that easy to do.

• Navigability of the website is important. Make sure your most important points (e.g., CSA info) are very visible and accessible.

• Use pictures! This is a place to boast about your product!

• Always keep in mind your goals with using social media when creating content and making other website decisions.
Regarding Facebook – “an arm attached to the main body of your marketing, your website,” Ripley gave these tips:

• Always use your Facebook and other social media outlets as a way to get people to your “home” on the Web that you control – because you don’t have control over Facebook’s policies, but you do control your website.

• Keep in mind your goals and make sure your content satisfies those goals. For Ripley, that means increasing connection with and retention of CSA members, and creating and maintaining a buzz about their farm in order to expand their CSA. “We tell people that we are growing the food that they want to buy – by talking about the things they care about.” For example, they tell the story that they have the best quality produce by posting photos of quality, fresh, beautiful produce. “Nothing sad or upsetting,” said Ripley. They link back to their website for recipes. They portray “knowing where your food comes from” through photos of activities on the farm, e.g., planting garlic. “One member wants to see that we’re not ‘industrial.’” The planting photo does that. “We remind people we’re at farmers’ market this week and what we have and how they can order it to pick up on our farm.” Humor helps – such as a photo of Gene holding the largest rutabaga of the season. They always post a picture of the week’s CSA share.

• Post between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., when people are awake.

• Use the scheduling option (the clock icon on the bottom left of the Facebook status update) over the weekend for posts during the week. Ripley takes pictures throughout the week and uploads and schedules them on Sunday. “I can be in the field all week and Facebook’s working for me and I’m working for myself.”

• Post at least one time per day to maintain interest in your page.

• Have an image with everything you post so that people will stop to look at it in their feeds.

• “Like” other farms, businesses, organizations, etc., and look through your business news feed for ideas for future posts.

• Sign up as a personal page so that you can interact better with your farm page and other business Facebook pages. She signed up as “Chester Carrot” for a personal page, and then created Ripley Farm. This allows more interaction with people on your page – e.g., to “like” what they’re saying and to comment on other business pages. You can’t do this if you sign in as a business page.

Ripley surveyed her CSA customers by putting a paper survey and a self-addressed stamped envelope with the last CSA share of the season. She got 75 percent response. This year she is trying Survey Monkey online. “I have yet to attain the same results, but it’s free.”

This year, when she asked her CSA members about the farm’s marketing, 75 percent said the recipes and website were very helpful to them in using the contents of their CSA box; 61 percent said their Facebook page made them feel very connected to what was going on at their farm. Past surveys showed most people find their CSA and sign up through word-of-mouth, so increased satisfaction with the CSA through their website and increased connection through their Facebook page translate to increased word-of-mouth, which should provide continued CSA growth.

Regarding surveys, Edith Gawler added that Google Form Builder on Google Docs is a good survey tool, collecting answers in a clean spreadsheet. You can link to the survey from Facebook and from a website.

Elsie Gawler and Anna Shapley-Quinn publicize their North Branch Farm in Monroe at

www.northbranchfarm.org and

https://www.facebook.com/NorthBranchFarm.

Elsie Gawler advised growers to have a camera on hand all the time.

Among websites to consider are Blogspot (free), WordPress (which she uses, paying $4 per month), Weebly and Squarespace.

Anna said that because they have a lot of family businesses, their Facebook page has about 400 likes – although that’s difficult to translate into sales. When Elsie posts on Facebook, Anna shares that on her personal page, then friends share it, and the message escalates.

They started the blog to share family photos with distant relatives and ended up posting about the farm. People (including the media) find them because they have a lot of text about their farm from the past four years, and they have information about horsepower.

They use WordPress, which, Elsie said, made it easier to get the look she wanted.

Draft horses help on the farm and with marketing. A silhouette of horses appears on their business card, for example, and customers seem to enjoy that. “It makes for beautiful, romantic pictures that you don’t always get with a tractor,” said Anna.

They think the best storytelling for farmers is still person-to-person. “We’re always excited about what we’re doing. We’re talking about it and let people know there is more information on the Internet – but ultimately it’s still about people and personal contact.”

‘Have fun with it,” said Elsie. “We’re always excited about what’s happening on the farm and want to put that out there.”

Edith Gawler publicizes Sylvester Manor Educational Farm on Shelter Island, N.Y., through

www.sylvestermanor.org,

www.plantandsing.com,

https://www.facebook.com/SylvesterManor?ref=hl and

https://twitter.com/sylvestermanor.

Edith met Bennett Konesni when he inherited proprietorship of Sylvester Manor, which has been in his family for 360 years. His vision was to turn the 243-acre property into a nonprofit educational farm.

A farmer, designer, musician and future homesteader, Edith has a background in architecture and is skilled in WordPress, website building, design narrative, design process, Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop.

She is using those skills to help publicize Sylvester Manor – to preserve its history, documents and legacy; to offer arts programs, workshops and educational programs to the community; and to highlight its CSA, begun in 2009.

Making such a diverse set of stakeholders feel like they’re being communicated with directly, without having multiple identities, is challenging. They are two hours from New York City, so cultivating donors is a huge part of their operation. They also want to capitalize on their many volunteers, as well as their many visitors and program attendees. And they want to be part of the local community – some 10,000 summer residents on the 8,000-acre island. They also want to be involved in today’s “incredible” networking movement of young farmers, and of historians and researchers.

Their windmill logo helps, as it symbolizes their heritage of a hand-built, quality agrarian life and a community institution where everyone on the island once came to mill grain.

Edith originally did all the farm’s communications herself – website, Facebook, Twitter, brochures, photos, graphics, T-shirts, signage, etc. Now she coordinates a team.

She did the website’s front end in Photoshop and worked with a development firm to implement the back end, using a WordPress custom theme. “It’s very easy to manipulate our custom website. Several staff members can edit it.

“Before you start to tell your farm story, you need to understand that story yourself,” said Edith. “How you communicate it defines who you are to [your audience]. You may think you’re something completely different than some people see you to be.”

Branding is so important, said Edith, so take your time with these questions: Who are you? How are you unique? Embrace your uniqueness and use it to set yourself apart.” She sees Maine as an amazing place with a huge movement of farmers, “but we have to make sure we’re all not doing the same thing. Are you the only one doing what you’re doing, or are you trying to get a foothold in an established market. Who are your stakeholders? Who is already naturally interested in what you do? Do you have experience with wholesale, retail, weddings, education? What are your favorite things about what you do? Answer all these questions and develop your brand first, because rebranding is really difficult.

“Communicating your farm story can be as simple as you want it to be. How much time are you willing to commit to recurring communications, like writing blog posts, taking photos, doing Twitter? There are tricks, like writing things in batch and then having them post at different times.

“If you have really limited time, do things to set yourself up, like investing in a rubber stamp and plastering your logo everywhere. Just get yourself out there.”

Once you have your brand and your plan, you need consistency. “Be recognizable. Be loveable. Think of everything you do as communicating. How your carrots are topped can tell people a lot about who you are as a farm and what you stand for.

“Beyond consistency, make sure it’s coherent and adaptive. Don’t design yourself into a corner. Embrace that unique and weird thing about you, whatever it is, and get people excited about it. Gather your team together, which is crucial. Who is available where and to do what? Who do you enjoy working with and communicating with regularly? Survey everyone involved with your farm to find out who has what skills and how much time can they allot to each thing? Do you have writers like Anna? Anna is an amazing writer, and was able to communicate through North Branch’s blog. Are you a painter? Work that in somehow. Elsie does amazing paintings of beautiful vegetables.” Use illustration if possible, and quality photos.

“Handwriting, lettering – that sort of handmade quality really speaks to the farming movement at the moment.”

To post hand-lettered work, Edith said you can scan the paper or photograph it with a smartphone, import and clean it up in Illustrator, then post it. “I have so many sketch books, and I use the illustrations and notes I take.”

“Do you have an intern who loves Instagram? Take advantage of that.

“Who has a great sense of humor? Have them write your Twitter posts.

“Start small. You don’t need to do everything all at once. Look at your strengths and start there. Look at your network – family, friends, neighbors, customers … and barter. Whoever is doing the task, give them full ownership of it. Expect great things and they’re likely to happen. Have clear expectations and clear boundaries.”

Schedule the time for communications. “In farming, the work is never done,” said Edith. “If you feel like communication is going to be a big part of your farm, make sure you schedule in the time to do that.”

Perception is also important. “You have to look as if you have your act together and, even more importantly, as if you’re having fun. Enjoy what you’re doing. A lot of us aren’t farming to make a million and retire early but to live the good life. Part of communicating your farm story is sharing that good life with everyone. When people are eating your vegetables and they’ve seen your beautiful blog, they’re not just tasting that carrot; they’re tasting that whole agrarian scene that grew that carrot, and it’s really this whole beautiful, romantic thing that happens.”

One of Sylvester Manor’s farm interns this summer had great handwriting, had fun lettering, so produced lettering for graphics for their CSA. Gawler mentioned Andrew Plotsky’s Farmrun (farmrun.com) as an example of incredible hand lettering and videos with a great sense of humor. Eliot Coleman also has a good graphic identity and a great personal brand – “He knows exactly who he is and what he stands for.” Others with strong identities are the National Young Farmers Coalition, Slow Food, the Beehive Collective, Stone Barns Center and The Greenhorns.

Gawler uses WordPress because it’s easy to incorporate a blog. She was able to make the site user-friendly for first-time visitors, and as recurring visitors go deeper into the site, they get more information – about the manor, its history, the farm’s CSA, WWOOFERs, the farmers’ market, work-song workshops, summer programs and special events, including an annual farm-to-table dinner (their biggest donor event). Their recipes are all tagged and hand-illustrated, and CSA and farm stand customers have latched onto Gawler’s artwork.

“Take that little extra time if you enjoy illustrating, handwriting, or know someone who does,” said Gawler, as the response has been strong. To enable searches, put key words in the body of the blog or use the image and a typed version of a recipe or post below it.

For events, a WordPress plug-in called Events Calendar Chrome enables visitors to see everything that’s going on in calendar view and get more information in list view.

Discussion

Farmer to Farmer participant Tom Roberts of Snakeroot Farm said they update their website in winter, because they don’t have time in summer. They update Facebook when they have a chance. “If we’ve got a good story or a good picture, it’s worth putting on the Facebook page,” but “I think just looking at pretty pictures gets old pretty quickly. I don’t know the story.” Their website has a “what’s new” feature, he added, “because there’s so much on there – this makes it easier for people to find new posts.”

Brenner said, “We go back and forth between image-centered and word-centered posts, depending on the time available. My daughter says her friends don’t read. Our parents like to read and hear things about the farm. We’re trying to appeal to both.”

Roberts noted that judging the effectiveness of promoting a farm by print, radio or TV can be as difficult as judging the effectiveness of social media.

Edith Gawler said Twitter can be helpful if you have a fresh product available for a short time – for example: “Fresh donuts today!”

Regarding the fact that MOFGA’s Facebook audience is mostly women in their 30s to 50s, a participant noted that Maine has had an increase in young farmers, and the majority are women. That skewed audience “might be to our benefit,” said Brenner: “Women make most of the food choices.” Ripley said most of their farm, CSA and PYO flower customers are women, and Roberts said the same is true at farmers’ markets. Participant Anna Mueller said women tend to network more, so are an important audience.

Asked whether to post bad news stories, such as those relating to pink slime or antibiotic resistance, Roberts responded, “It’s negative about people who don’t grow stuff like you do. Just link to stories and say you offer an alternative.” Another participant suggested posting a beautiful picture of your farm one day, linking to the bad story the next day and featuring a recipe using your products the following day.

To help market meat products, “I’ve got to be photographing that roast when I take it out of the oven, or those vegetables,” said a participant. To do that, Brenner said to clear off the table and set the scene with the beautiful roast with natural light coming in. “Look through Bon Appetit and see how they depict meat,” she said, adding, “I move my bottle of whiskey out of the way…” Ted Quaday suggested creating a 45-second video of prepping meat for cooking.

Brenner hesitates to open videos on Facebook, because they may be 5 minutes long, but on Instagram they’re only a few seconds long, “and you get the audio, which is hugely powerful.”

Elsie suggested posting comments on other farms’ Facebook pages, as “all your followers will see it. If you just ‘like’ a post, they won’t. Take advantage to contribute to the discussion going on in the community.” Brenner added, “If I see something interesting on North Branch Farm, I click ‘share,’ and all my followers see it.” Ripley said that feature is not possible on a business Facebook page.

Regarding Twitter, Elsie said, “If you know a lot of your customers use Twitter, I recommend using it.” Post something like, “Our first harvest of broccoli is now at our farm stand.” You can link Twitter with Instagram and Facebook so one photo is posted to all three.

Another participant noted the ability to use “Tweetups” to call people to action – to testify for legislation, for example, or discuss strategy.

Edith said, “Wit is the most important tool with Twitter, because you have only 140 characters.” She had an intern who was good at this and generated a lot of traffic to their farm.

Roberts said he spends a lot of time engaging his customers in a conversation “so that they don’t see me as a vending machine but as a person they can connect to. That makes me realize that if you try for bonding, sales will follow; if you try for sales, you sound like you’re trying to sell something.” He uses his website to offer detailed information – e.g., instructions on building a greenhouse out of logs from the woods. People thank him for the information. “For every one thank-you, probably 100 people are grateful but didn’t thank me. Emailing one-to-one and conversations at farmers’ markets are probably the most important communications I do; others – the newsletter, Facebook – are more like direction signs. Think of the farmers’ market or the farm stand as media, too. The experience people have at the point of sale will determine whether they come back or not.”

Edith agreed. “It’s great to get people in but you have to get people to stick. Offer something really educational so that people feel like they’re becoming a better person.” That human connection is key, she said.

– J E

The post Focus on Marketing appeared first on Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners.

Food Safety

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:13 +0000

By Cheryl Wixson

Forty-one days after our company launched its first products, we received an urgent recall from Starwest Botanicals, a supplier of organic herbs and spices, due to Salmonella contamination of organic celery seed, 1 pound size, lot number 40302, shipped between June 29, 2011, and November 29, 2011. We were instructed to examine our stocks immediately and discontinue use and distribution and recall any product we had distributed with the contaminated seed.

We had received Starwest organic celery seed on September 19 and put it into inventory, removing it from its original packaging. The lot number was not on the new storage container.

With no record of the lot number, in accordance with good manufacturing processes and in the best interest of consumer safety, we assumed that the celery seed we received was contaminated. Our company continued with the recall process.

We had 394 grams of celery seed in inventory, 60 g less than the 454 g (1 pound) we had received. We needed to account for 60 g of potentially contaminated celery seed in our manufactured products.

Every product prepared in our steam kettle receives a batch number, and we maintain batch logs that identify the batch number, date, product manufactured, number of units produced, ingredient sources and notes (e.g., pH or final temperature). Two of our licensed products, a pickled vegetable and a vegetable relish, contain organic celery seed.

From the batch log history, I calculated that 387 jars of product had been manufactured with celery seed. The last that may have contained contaminated seed was manufactured on October 26, 2011. The run was for 47 jars of the pickled vegetable, Batch #1126101, with a pH of 3.75. From the recipe, I determined that we used 51 g of celery seed in the production.

Once product has been manufactured, jars are labeled and marked on the bottom with the batch number, are then placed in cases that are also marked with the batch number, and are stored in a warehouse room. We keep records of the batch numbers of all products distributed to our retail partners and to our winter shareholders. The identified, potentially contaminated manufactured product had not yet been distributed; all 47 jars were in the warehouse.

This analysis accounted for all but 9 g (about 1 Tbsp.) of the potentially contaminated celery seed. Was this much seed spilled in the transfer to a new container, or could it have contaminated other products?

Salmonella control focuses on adequately cooking food. We heat our product before bottling to 100 C (212 F). In accordance with the FDA Good Manufacturing Practices, we maintain a minimum fill temperature of 190 F for product going into the last jar of a batch. After a discussion with Jason Bolton, food safety specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service, we determined that with our manufacturing processes, no microbiological food safety issue existed with any remaining products.

We notified Starwest Botanicals that we had located the contaminated seed and manufactured product. They instructed us to destroy both and compensated us for both.

The National Organic Program details record keeping by certified operations in NOP 205.103. Based on these and this food-safety recall, we realized that our records for tracking incoming ingredients needed additional components. We are developing processes to track produce from our certified organic suppliers, and herbs, seeds and ingredients from other suppliers. Future individual manufacturing runs will have a recipe batch sheet that tracks all ingredients, including lot numbers.

In licensing our product, Dr. Al Bushway, the food processing authority for Maine, had recommended that we develop a recall plan. The state recommends that all records be maintained for at least three years, while the NOP requires that all organic records be kept a minimum of five years.

For our small start-up company, the potential recall of almost 400 jars of product may have required that we contact 40 shareholders, 20 retail partners, and dozens of individual consumers. Fortunately, our records helped us weather the storm and improve our processes for future production.

Cheryl is MOFGA’s organic marketing consultant. You can contact her at Cheryl@mofga.org.

The post Food Safety appeared first on Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners.

Distributor

Clare Boland — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 07:19:13 +0000

By Melissa White Pillsbury

At the Maine Agricultural Trades Show in January, Leah and Marada Cook of Crown O’ Maine Organic Coop (COMOC) discussed what farmers need to know about selling to a distributor. They shared insights into the worlds of produce distributors in general and of COMOC in particular.

Is Your Product Legal?

First and foremost, your product must be legal to sell. Leah and Marada spend a lot of time educating producers about the rules and regulations for selling particular products. Producers should check with the Maine Department of Agriculture, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – not with distributors – to learn about licensing, labeling and other requirements for selling products legally.

Don’t ask a distributor to sell a product that can’t be sold legally, even if you disagree with the way the product is regulated. For example, “We can’t sell raw cider. We just can’t do it,” said Leah.

Documentation Requirements

Selling through a distributor can involve more scrutiny than selling directly to the end user. The distributor will likely want documentation for a food safety plan and/or certification, including, at minimum, a water test showing that you have an appropriate source of water to wash produce; a certain amount of product liability insurance; and evidence of any claims you are making about your product (e.g., your organic certificate, if you are calling your product organic).

Invest in a Long-Term Relationship

Unless your product has a long storage life, no distributor wants a call after the product is harvested. Distributors can often accommodate unexpected surplus product, but the Cooks note that if farmers use distributors to “dump” excess product, neither the farmer nor the distributor will profit in the long run. Building the market for local foods depends on reliable supply. The farmer needs to provide the distributor with reliable availability information, which the distributor then needs to provide its customers. If the distributor cannot consistently fill orders, customers may not order from that distributor again. Farmers should build a relationship with the distributor and plan ahead to supply product.

The Cooks recommend talking to a distributor in the winter – not a slow time for distributors but a good time to plan for the next growing season. The volume of product a farm sells through a distributor may grow slowly or quickly over time, depending on how successful the relationship becomes for both grower and distributor. Generally, COMOC likes to start with new farm vendors on a very limited basis, typically taking several years before a supplier may grow thousands of pounds of produce to sell through them.

Good Communication and Timing are Critical

Communicate with your buyer as clearly as possible in order to meet everyone’s expectations. Be upfront about your product’s quality and quantity so that the distributor can respond appropriately. If the quality will hold for only a few days after the distributor picks up the product from the farm, your distributor needs to know this in order to get the product out quickly to end customers. If a crop isn’t ready to harvest when you originally expected, tell your distributor so that she can adjust the availability sheet and avoid disappointing customers (who otherwise may not order from the distributor next time).

Meet Quality and Safety Needs

After a distributor picks up product at the farm, the receiver may reject it at the warehouse if it does not meet quality or safety requirements. (It’s not the driver’s job to officially accept a product.) Distributors commonly visually inspect and measure the temperature of product arriving at the warehouse. Proper temperature indicates quality and safety for certain products. For example, regulations require that eggs be kept at 42 F or lower.

If a product isn’t as good as it needs to be when it arrives at the warehouse, or regulatory or safety requirements have not been met, it can be rejected, and, as Leah pointed out, “Most distributors will ship it back to you at your expense. Be really clear with your buyer about what you’ve got to offer.”

Pricing

Unlike larger distributors, COMOC begins the conversation about price with the farmer’s cost of production. Farmers should communicate clearly what price they need to get. COMOC is committed to making prices work for the producer if the farm’s cost structure is not too high.

Margins vary on different products. Marada asks herself, “How much legwork will I need to do to make that product successful?” and sets the margin accordingly. Before the growing season, distributors can give an expected price range for particular products based on previous years’ sales, but they can’t give an exact price until the time of sale. As a rule of thumb for produce, Marada said a good farm gate price is approximately half the retail price you might see at a Maine food co-op.

For a sustainable local food system, farmers must price their products appropriately across markets according to costs associated with selling to each type of market. For example, a farmer shouldn’t ask for the same price when selling to a distributor as when selling directly to a store. The distributor provides a service – delivering to the store – and the distributor or the farmer needs to pay for this service. Free delivery is not sustainable, said Marada.

Payment Terms

Unlike selling at a farmers’ market, growers aren’t paid immediately by distributors. With COMOC, “sometimes it takes longer to get paid than others.” Payment terms can range from 7 to 30 days or more and can sometimes be negotiated with the buyer. Talk about this up front with your distributor or wholesale buyer. If you cannot wait 30 days for payment, then a distributor may not work for you. Sometimes COMOC will “take a break” from a producer because the farm’s business structure can’t comfortably handle the payment terms.

Packing Standards

Ask distributors, “How do you need this packaged? What is your case weight or count?” Packing standards address several needs related to distributing produce, including the need to protect and efficiently handle the product and to present consistent product units to customers.

Distributors often need to handle a product three or four times before it reaches its final sales destination, so packaging must be durable. Leah says, “Salad ties on a 25-pound bag of carrots don’t work – they come off. And then we have to deal with dirty carrots scattered across the warehouse floor. Wire ties are a big deal.” She also warns, “Don’t put anything wet in paper packaging!!”

Produce that can be bruised or damaged easily must go in a waxed box. If the product will touch the sides of the box, use a brand new waxed box. If the product is bagged, COMOC will let you reuse a waxed box. Other distributors may have different requirements.

COMOC deals with lots of oddly sized boxes but is getting away from this to improve stacking and palletizing – necessary to move product around efficiently.

Bags or boxes must have uniform weights or counts for a distributor. Varied counts or weights are unmanageable for someone already distributing more than 150 products a week. If you’re selling bags of cabbage, every bag of cabbage must weigh the same. If you’re selling boxes of head lettuce, each box must have the same number of heads.

Packaging is a real cost when working with a distributor, so be sure to incorporate the cost of packaging in your price.

Labeling

When selling to a distributor, you must label your product with your farm name and a lot number that can be used to trace the product back to the field and day on which it was harvested. If a safety or quality concern arises, only that lot number, and not your entire product line, will have to be pulled.

Invoicing

Include an invoice or packing slip with the product when it’s picked up from the farm. Paper trails help eliminate mistakes. Ideally the driver checks the invoice or packing slip at pickup, but that’s not always the case. It IS checked when the product arrives at the warehouse. COMOC handles discrepancies between invoices and warehouse records case by case, but without a copy of your invoice, the distributor can pay only for what warehouse receipts show.

Rejections

Distributors’ customers sometimes reject product because it lacks quality. COMOC handles this situation on a case-by-case basis to determine who is responsible. Storage conditions at the retail location or distributor’s warehouse may not have been adequate, or the product may have been ready to turn when it left the farm. Tell your distributor if you know your product is questionable; with enough information, the distributor can try to get the product to the end customer before it loses value.

Sales

Ask distributors how they do business. Is your relationship with this distributor exclusive? Can you still sell directly to customers?

COMOC supports farmers doing their own sales and can deliver your product to your customers. The company would rather not compete with you or other distributors to sell your product. In other words, it’s better not to sell your product to COMOC if you’re selling the same product to one of COMOC’s customers yourself. Likewise, don’t sell your product to COMOC if you’re selling the same product to another distributor who also sells to COMOC customers.

Opportunities

COMOC is always happy to discuss new products you may want to sell to a new market or products available for an extended season. In the world of produce, you’ll benefit most by being able to supply a product when no one else has it. For example, snap peas were a surprise success for COMOC in the Boston market last year. Massachusetts growers have a short pea season; Maine’s is four weeks longer; so customers in Boston were happy to buy Maine snap peas at the price offered (while the same peas at the same price were not selling in Maine).

Final Word: Business Plans

When writing your business plan, look at the big picture for your farm, advised the Cooks. How will selling to COMOC or any distributor fit into your overall marketing plan, which you will refine and revise over time? Typically, small diversified farmers first market a small volume of many crops directly to consumers; over time they may grow a handful of products in larger volumes that are better suited for wholesale markets.

History of Crown O’ Maine

COMOC was started to address the need for a market for produce grown in Aroostook County. It aggregated product from Aroostook farms and transported and sold it downstate and out of state. Over the years the business evolved and expanded. It markets most of its products in Maine, sourcing from 160 vendors throughout the year and having at least 150 products on its availability sheet at any time, depending on the season. It trucks every day of the week, picking up from farms and delivering to customers – including many buying clubs. In the last three years, gross sales have grown from $300,000 to more than $1 million. For more information, see www.crownofmainecoop.com.

Melissa White Pillsbury is MOFGA’s organic marketing coordinator. You can contact her at Melissa@mofga.org.

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