The South Cumberland Farmers Market (Rooted Here) and Sewanee Dining are jointly sponsoring an On-Campus Farmers’ Market 9am-noon, Sat., Oct. 8 on the lawn at Sterling's. Sewanee Dining’s commitment to dedicating 30 percent of its budget to locally grown food and SCFM’s goal of making locally grown food readily available to consumers dovetail in a shared commitment to support local farmers. For many students, the market will be a rare opportunity to meet the farmers who raise the food they eat and, likewise for community members who purchase online from SCFM and rarely have face contact with the farmers. All area farmers are invited to participate, not just those affiliated with SCFM.
Presentation by UT Law Students: Recommended Tax Structure for Rooted Here
by William A. Calla, Shravan Suni Malaney, James N. Hargis, and Meagan Elise Davis
Letter from Board President Jess Wilson: South Cumberland Food Hub
Lessons Learned, Aug. 15, 2015
Up until last week the South Cumberland Food Hub had been dormant during 2015. (If you are totally new to Rooted Here, the South Cumberland Food Hub is a network of local growers and wholesale customers that operates similarly to the South Cumberland Farmer’s Market and was funded by individuals in Sewanee, private Foundations, and the USDA). During the last six months, we helped our farmers when we could by allowing them to operate under our insurance coverage when selling to the University of the South or to SAGE Dining at St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School. We were not able to operate regularly because we were not able to guarantee enough sales to cover our costs. Last year as our grant funding ran out we changed our business model so that our coordinator and driver would be paid a commission rather than an hourly wage. While this allows for a lot of flexibility, it does not encourage the kind of coordination that needs to take place behind the scenes to make sure that we have growers lined up and ready to sell once the University opens its doors to students in the fall. We are currently considering where this leaves our food hub and how to proceed in a way that preserves our mission and best serves our farmers. Toward that end, we would like to share what we have learned and what we hope to do moving forward.
There were a number of things that lead us to where we are today, but the main story is one of economics. We set out to work with small farms, restaurants, and area institutions. We found that without more time and funding we could not create a stable marketplace. Demand was high when the project was theoretical, but after three years only two institutions actually committed to purchase local food—the University of the South and the Franklin County school system. Restaurants in Sewanee and even in Chattanooga were enthusiastic but unpredictable and ultimately could not provide enough demand or enough consistent demand. We learned that we could serve restaurants if they were secondary to our more stable institutions. Instability in the demand was mirrored by, and perhaps caused by, instability of our producers.
Many of our smaller producers are one-person or one-family operations and changes in the family such as illness or the need to get an outside job greatly shifted what our small farms could supply. We did have some stable larger farms but many of these were outside of our immediate area. While these more stable farms could carry the hub and allow for our smaller farms to fit in as needed, the distance to get to these farms and the work involved in coordinating proved to be more expensive than what we could afford based on sales.
To summarize, we learned that there is little stability in our local food economy but also that that stability is exactly what we need in order to grow our local food economy and to make it easier for growers and purchasers in the future. We also learned that the infrastructure that the food hub provides is essential to beginning to create that stability. Customers need easy access to local food and farmers need a way to more efficiently connect with institutional buyers.
What we need in order to proceed is more funding to pay a coordinator to continue this important work. As an organization, Rooted Here has been greatly hindered by our for-profit status and our inability to find answer to legal structural questions. Moreover, Rooted Here, as an organization that relies on the guidance of volunteers, lacks the agility necessary to deal with the many tasks that are required to continue to build the food hub.
Given these circumstances, we intend to merge the South Cumberland Food Hub with the Harvested Here Food Hub in Chattanooga. We hope that we can work out efficient ways to get products from our farmers into the greater Chattanooga marketplace where there is potentially more demand. We intend to work with Harvested Here in whatever way we can in order to help them build a successful and lasting food hub.
Additionally we hope to collaborate with our largest and most stable purchaser in the area, the University of the South, to find new ways to coordinate the University's local purchases. The food hub has been coordinating and purchasing for the University for the last three years and this has made a huge difference to our local farms. We have already begun moving products through the South Cumberland Farmer’s Market to the University and building our local sales in that manner and we hope to find additional ways that we can collaborate in order to continue to serve our smaller farms and local restaurants and especially to continue delivering local food to the Franklin County school system.
The Rooted Here Board of Directors releases these observations with the hope of starting a dialog about how we can continue to support our local farms and to maintain an infrastructure that allows easy access into markets for farmers in our area. We feel that this is vital to helping to make agriculture a viable occupation, and to increasing the availability of fresh, local foods in our communities.
We welcome your thoughts.
Jess Wilson
President of the Board, Rooted Here
Up until last week the South Cumberland Food Hub had been dormant during 2015. (If you are totally new to Rooted Here, the South Cumberland Food Hub is a network of local growers and wholesale customers that operates similarly to the South Cumberland Farmer’s Market and was funded by individuals in Sewanee, private Foundations, and the USDA). During the last six months, we helped our farmers when we could by allowing them to operate under our insurance coverage when selling to the University of the South or to SAGE Dining at St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School. We were not able to operate regularly because we were not able to guarantee enough sales to cover our costs. Last year as our grant funding ran out we changed our business model so that our coordinator and driver would be paid a commission rather than an hourly wage. While this allows for a lot of flexibility, it does not encourage the kind of coordination that needs to take place behind the scenes to make sure that we have growers lined up and ready to sell once the University opens its doors to students in the fall. We are currently considering where this leaves our food hub and how to proceed in a way that preserves our mission and best serves our farmers. Toward that end, we would like to share what we have learned and what we hope to do moving forward.
There were a number of things that lead us to where we are today, but the main story is one of economics. We set out to work with small farms, restaurants, and area institutions. We found that without more time and funding we could not create a stable marketplace. Demand was high when the project was theoretical, but after three years only two institutions actually committed to purchase local food—the University of the South and the Franklin County school system. Restaurants in Sewanee and even in Chattanooga were enthusiastic but unpredictable and ultimately could not provide enough demand or enough consistent demand. We learned that we could serve restaurants if they were secondary to our more stable institutions. Instability in the demand was mirrored by, and perhaps caused by, instability of our producers.
Many of our smaller producers are one-person or one-family operations and changes in the family such as illness or the need to get an outside job greatly shifted what our small farms could supply. We did have some stable larger farms but many of these were outside of our immediate area. While these more stable farms could carry the hub and allow for our smaller farms to fit in as needed, the distance to get to these farms and the work involved in coordinating proved to be more expensive than what we could afford based on sales.
To summarize, we learned that there is little stability in our local food economy but also that that stability is exactly what we need in order to grow our local food economy and to make it easier for growers and purchasers in the future. We also learned that the infrastructure that the food hub provides is essential to beginning to create that stability. Customers need easy access to local food and farmers need a way to more efficiently connect with institutional buyers.
What we need in order to proceed is more funding to pay a coordinator to continue this important work. As an organization, Rooted Here has been greatly hindered by our for-profit status and our inability to find answer to legal structural questions. Moreover, Rooted Here, as an organization that relies on the guidance of volunteers, lacks the agility necessary to deal with the many tasks that are required to continue to build the food hub.
Given these circumstances, we intend to merge the South Cumberland Food Hub with the Harvested Here Food Hub in Chattanooga. We hope that we can work out efficient ways to get products from our farmers into the greater Chattanooga marketplace where there is potentially more demand. We intend to work with Harvested Here in whatever way we can in order to help them build a successful and lasting food hub.
Additionally we hope to collaborate with our largest and most stable purchaser in the area, the University of the South, to find new ways to coordinate the University's local purchases. The food hub has been coordinating and purchasing for the University for the last three years and this has made a huge difference to our local farms. We have already begun moving products through the South Cumberland Farmer’s Market to the University and building our local sales in that manner and we hope to find additional ways that we can collaborate in order to continue to serve our smaller farms and local restaurants and especially to continue delivering local food to the Franklin County school system.
The Rooted Here Board of Directors releases these observations with the hope of starting a dialog about how we can continue to support our local farms and to maintain an infrastructure that allows easy access into markets for farmers in our area. We feel that this is vital to helping to make agriculture a viable occupation, and to increasing the availability of fresh, local foods in our communities.
We welcome your thoughts.
Jess Wilson
President of the Board, Rooted Here
