Ken Meter on "Community Food Webs"

[chromedome]

https://civileats.com/2021/05/07/why-ken-meter-is-on-a-mission-to-build-community-food-webs/

[kayb]

Interesting. I've been fortunate to have been associated with a couple of farmers and farm cooperatives who have been successful at small vegetable/fruit/livestock/poultry farming. I also know a lot of people involved in large-scale commodity row-crop farming. Crop insurance, USDA subsidies and having the ability to shuffle/rotate what crops they produce keeps those guys solvent, if they're big enough. I know one farm family that farms about 10,000 acres -- wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton, occasionally corn, with forays into peanuts and sunflowers, and I think they may be trying their hand at hemp.

 

Another couple that started a small farm with, initially, organic vegetables, fruit, chicken and pork have now expanded into raw milk (you can sell it in Arkansas if you sell it from point of origin; i.e., they can sell at the dairy, but not from the farmers' market), lamb and beef, and are running a much larger operation in terms of sales volume; he's also a partner in a feed mill, and sells grain to a local craft brewery, and in turn gets the used mash from the brewery to feed his hogs. One of his feed mill partners is also a partner in three slaughterhouses/processors that process small-batch beef, pork, chicken and bison. Lack of slaughterhouse availability is the biggest roadblock to small-batch livestock; my farmers from whom I get most of my meat are having to wait interminable amounts of time to get animals processed.

 

When I lived in Hot Springs, I was part of a buyer's co-op that served as an intermediary between farmers and consumers. You paid $25 a month to belong to the co-op, which was open two Fridays a month. Those Friday mornings, farmers would deliver their produce/meat/fruit/etc. to the co-op, and in the afternoon, the consumers would come pick up and pay for their orders they'd placed online. The co-op banked the money, paid the farmers, and kept the books. Volunteers staffed everything, except for the bookkeeper. It worked well, and I miss it. Here, I do have available several different CSAs, which I don't participate in because they always want to bring me kale.

[liuzhou]

6 hours ago, kayb said:

Another couple that started a small farm with, initially, organic vegetables, fruit, chicken and pork have now expanded into raw milk (you can sell it in Arkansas if you sell it from point of origin; i.e., they can sell at the dairy, but not from the farmers' market)

 

What if they take the cow to the farmers' market? After all, the cow is the "point of origin"; not the dairy!

[kayb]

H'mmm. I'll ask them if they've thought of that. Talk about your fresh milk...

[AAQuesada]

On 5/15/2021 at 8:08 PM, liuzhou said:

What if they take the cow to the farmers' market? After all, the cow is the "point of origin"; not the dairy!

Lol I don't know how it works in China but here Government inspectors don't have much of a  sense of humor I've found