For a start it is very early days for these types of local food systems and although we have a solid subscriber base in Brisbane the ‘choice’ issue, will always be a challenge until the 100th monkey supports us over ‘centralised, get the produce from anywhere, don’t worry about what price the farmer gets or how much waste is created, etc’ dominant food distribution systems.

It is going to take some very careful collaboration’s with farmers and ethically minded enterprises to solve these issues and Food Connect is keen to work with more traditional CSA’s to help plug the gaps and grow the subscriber / customer base for all.

We have built a fantastic piece of software to handle the subscriber end of things and with the use of these funky social media tools we can better communicate so as to avoid disappointment but the farmer end of this software is still being thought through. Exciting stuff in these early days particularly when you get big IT companies loving you enough to develop this end of the software for all good farmers pro-bono.

On on with the necessary mutiny.
Robert

To get to your question about how the range of produce you supply affects consumers, I would first of all suggest that it depends on how food-literate your buyers are. Do they understand the limitations on a single farm producing all that they might want? Do they understand that crops are not always available because farming is a seasonal activity? That the farmers (your) time is limited and that you can do only so much?

Much of this gets down to communication, to how well you communicate with your subscriber group. Running a farm leaves little time for communication and, as a Victorian study of CSAs found some years ago, communication is not always a strong point among rural producers. That is why, in the Food Connect system, Food Connect fills that role and relieves the farmer of it.

Options for communication include producing a simple one-page printed newsletter to distribute with your food boxes, which is what Food Connect Sydney does, information about how and what you produce on your website and organising subscriber visits to your farm.

Secondly, I think the range of produce supplied might influence at least some subscribers to your service. There’s the convenience factor — subscribers might find they have to make such a large quantity of supplementary food purchases that they figure the box system is too much trouble. I imagine that this comes into play especially in regard to staples — you mention onions and potatoes.

I would suggest that in communicating with subscribers you focus on the nutritional value of local foods (a function of freshness), the value of knowing the farmer who produces the food and the methods you use to produce it (this is probably more effective if you grow organically, certified or uncertified, or use methods that avoid synthetic chemicals) and that their money is a vote for local food, their local economy and their local farmer. You mention that you plan to diversify production to include more foods in demand, and I think that would be worth mentioning too.

Now, to your last question Mark. My association with Food Connect is through personal contact and through my work for community food systems, as well as being associated with a City Cousin collection point here in Sydney’s east.

I think an answer to your question has to come from Food Connect itself, so I’m going to forward a link from this page with your question to Food Connect people in the hope they will respond to you in another comment on this page.

Thanks again for your comment Mark. Making it a public discussion like this will hopefully help readers become more food-literate and understand the values of regional food systems and the opportunities and barriers facing producers and eaters.

I wonder in your experience, how the range of produce effects consumers?

We cannot always provide potatoes or carrots or onions or some other ordinary item and people need to buy them from their local shop. I suspect as time goes by we will be more capable of supplying the range but worry about the building phase.

We have avoided sourcing the produce to make up the shortfall and wonder if there may be a way we could work with food connect to fill the gaps?

Regards Mark