Food Connects Employees Support SUSU commUNITY Farm

In January of 2021, Food Connects launched its first employee charitable giving initiative. After a round of nominations and voting, our staff chose SUSU commUNITY Farm to be the beneficiary of this initiative. 13 of our employees participated in this new giving program, totaling $1,222.00 for SUSU. Our team is inspired by SUSU’s grassroots, local efforts to address food and racial justice in our community. And we are excited to continue working with them, as both of our organizations grow.

SUSU commUNITY Farm is a Black and Indigenous stewarded farm in Southern Vermont. They offer life-affirming spaces for Black, Indigenous, People of color to thrive and experience safety while healing from the intergenerational trauma of systemic oppression. They are committed to bringing multiracial commUNITY together to build sustainable relationships based in reciprocity. They do this by supporting our people in connecting back to their traditional lineages and foodways, being guided by the wisdom of our ancestors, centering global majority-led and peer-supported culturally relevant programming, and building a statewide culture of liberation in Vermont.

Local Farmers: Feast or Famine—Monadnock Table Magazine

COVID-19 has and continues to change the landscape of local food. In response to new restrictions, increases in demand, and a myriad of other issues local farmers and food producers continue to prove their resiliency and adaptability. The Monadnock Table Magazine recently featured Food Connects alongside our partners Stonewall Farm, Tracie’s Community Garden LLC, and Mayfair Farm to learn more about our experience during these challenging times.

Growing Local Food Markets with Food Connects

We are excited to announce the launch of our “Growing Local Food Markets in the Monadnock Region” crowdfunding campaign, through The Local Crowd Monadnock, this March. The goal of this online campaign is to raise $10,000 to go towards building Food Connects’ infrastructure and capacity to sell to larger, wholesale customers.

We partner with local farmers and food producers throughout the Monadnock Region to deliver their bounty to schools, grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, and other businesses. Our work creates a vibrant food economy with a vision to make local food accessible to all community members. And to achieve this goal, food producers need access to larger markets, allowing them to scale up production and increase their revenue.

But it’s not as simple as selling to larger customers. “Many large-scale, wholesale customers in the community can only purchase from a limited number of approved vendors,” says McKenna Hayes, Food Connects Food Hub Operations Manager. “It is difficult, if not impossible, to become an approved vendor for small-scale, family-owned operations.”

“One of the neat things about dealing with Food Connects is having a single point of contact for the farmers,” says Troy Bellot, Executive Chef at Keene State College. “They’re a single point of ordering and have one portal to order, making things so much easier.”

“The restrictions to growing my business is the access to the marketplaces,” says Linda Rubin, owner of Frisky Cow Gelato. “I can’t get into larger markets as a little guy. I need a distributor that not only will work with me but has that third-party certification so it is easy for stores to bring in, not just my products, but lots of local Vermont and New Hampshire products.

With the Growing Local Food Markets in the Monadnock Region campaign, Food Connects will become an approved vendor for larger customers, allowing schools, grocery stores, hospitals, and restaurants to easily purchase from over 70 local farms and producers that sell through Food Connects.

Funds from this campaign will go towards portable hand washing stations, shelving and storage, staff training, and a third-party food safety certification and audit. As an approved vendor, we can distribute local products to larger customers—meaning local food is consumed by more community members across the region.

“Third-party food certifications are important to us for traceability of our food,” says Bellot. “That’s what it all boils down to. Knowing exactly where every cucumber, every tomato, every piece of fish we order—where that came from, the farmer who picked it, the boat that brought it in, everybody who handled it. The traceability of food is key to accountability and safety.”

“This money will have a major impact on our day-to-day operations,” says Hayes. “We will gain operational efficiencies, purchase required equipment, and formally integrate food safety procedures and record-keeping into our distribution systems. But, more importantly, this funding will enable us to overcome the barriers farmers and producers face when entering larger wholesale markets, and ultimately, grow our local food economy.”

Find more information at  http://bit.ly/3aKEate. We will also offer a Happy Hour Hangout at Machina Arts Artbar in Keene on Thursday, March 26 for community members to learn more about this crowdfunding campaign.