Mike Thorn believes in change. He believes that small farmers can build sustainable businesses. He believes that restaurants and institutions will one day be able to source local food with ease. And he believes it’s time for high-tech solutions to support the vibrant, local businesses that are bringing good food to our tables.
Mike joined Local Orbit as the lead programmer in May, and he hasn’t come up for air since. From developing new features for our pilot hub sites to figuring out how to solve problems created by rural satellite internet connections, he’s been busy. Mike’s work on our upcoming release will allow us to tailor Local Orbit’s tools to each region’s unique needs and support a variety of food distribution business models. It will also provide rich production and distribution information to help everyone involved in the value chain with future planning.
Mike’s food values come from his deep family roots. His father, a professor and doctor, cooked dinner for his family every night, inspired by the foods of his Thai and Chinese upbringing. Local produce was always on the menu and still is today; he purchases at least 50% of his food from Farmer’s Markets and blows away dinner guests with his unbelievable lamb curry that takes 10 hours of hands on cooking to perfect.
Mike was majoring in Chemistry at Eastern Michigan University, but chose to jump into the fast and furious world of internet startups instead. Soon after, his first startup consulting company was awarded a major project for The Dow Chemical Company, lasting 9 years. Mike’s role in this project was the primary software architect for their laboratory information management system. His software was used to outsource millions of dollars of routine testing, enabling shorter hold times on inventory and freeing expensive internal resources to focus on product development and refinement. Later, he helped implement a web-based data mining processor that used natural language processing to calculate performance metrics for Fortune 500 companies such as Disney and RCI. Most recently, he designed a HIPPA-compliant architecture for an electronic medical record system start-up, Therapy Charts
Mike is excited to see his work help farmers grow stronger businesses. In the long run, he sees himself making an even greater contribution by helping our users run their businesses more effectively with the robust, easy-to-use planning and marketing tools Local Orbit is developing. His goal is to bring the resources and tools that create advantages for big agriculture and huge retail chains to 10-acre farms and 10-table restaurants alike.
I had the pleasure of attending the Michigan Organic Food and Farming Conference last weekend and was inspired by the vision and integrity of farmers I met who’ve built successful businesses, as well new farmers who are just starting out. Highlights included an intergenerational panel that addressed needs and resources for incubating new farmers, a session on creative strategies for farmland acquisition, and a panel about Michigan Thumb Organics (MTO).
MTO is a cooperative of experienced farmers whose individual members sell organic commodities crops like soy and corn. They’ve come together to expand and diversify sustainable local food production. Check out Chris Bedford’s video for their story.
The Toronto Star sent Margaret Webb to find farms that produce the raw materials for junk food. The result of her search is a compelling and unsettling piece about the journey of food from field to factory to snack.
Ultimately, however, Webb articulates what many of us already know and are working toward in the way we eat, produce and distribute food:
Food is powerful. Change is possible with every purchase we make, in every link we forge between good food and good farming, and in every bite we take.
Follow the flow of food. That’s what any farmer will tell you. Because apples don’t grow in supermarkets.…to get to the root of the exploding obesity epidemic, I went in search of a junk food farm.
Such farms are not so easy to spot. No fields of Dorito bags waving in the breeze, no orchards blooming with soda pop, no soil bursting with 99-cent burgers.
For all the grumbling you do about your weekly grocery bill, the fact is you’ve never had it so good, at least in terms of what you pay for every calorie you eat. According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Those savings begin with the remarkable success of one crop: corn…But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs.
A decades long conversation about the sustainability of our food system has moved from books and blogs and food activist listservs into mainstream media. Wherever you look there’s an article, a movie, a TV or radio segment about our broken food system, about food safety, about how our eating habits are making us sick.
And about how much organic lettuce the White House Garden is producing. read on…
We’ll be profiling Local Orbit buyers and sellers from time to time and thought it would be great to kick off our new video series with a new farmer, Brad Boettcher. After losing his job at General Motors last year, Brad decided to become a full-time farmer and raise catfish, chickens and turkeys. Aimee Boettcher keeps bees.
There are many reasons we buy local. It’s a given that we get healthy, fresh, great tasting food – from producers we know and trust. Equally important is the impact our spending choices have on local economies.
According to the Michigan Department of Agriculture, if each household in our home state of Michigan started spending $10 per week of their grocery bill on Michigan products, we would keep more than $37 million in Michigan, each week. That’s almost $2 billion per year.
(Did you know? Michigan has the second most diverse agricultural output in the country, after California. It’s also among the top five states in the production of over 30 different types of crops, and ranks first in the production of tart cherries, blueberries, navy beans, cranberry beans, and black turtle beans. Agriculture is the second largest industry in Michigan and, unlike manufacturing, has shown steady growth through the recession. The sector is expected to create 12,000-23,000 new jobs in the next 2 years.)
The dollar you spend at a local business contributes three times more to the local economy than the dollar you spend at a chain store. That’s three times more income, three times more jobs, and three times more tax benefits. It’s called the local multiplier effect.
YES! magazine lays out the numbers in this downloadable poster , demonstrating how buying local can … make your money count—more than once.
