We are pleased to welcome Julie Ankenbrandt to our fold, one of few (we guess) COOs who milks her own cows and grows her own food. Fortunately for us, she also knows a thing or two about growing Internet businesses.
“I wouldn’t have guessed that someday my interests in local food and my experience in payment systems and the Internet would converge,” Julie says. “But I couldn’t be more pleased to have the dots connect with a team like Local Orbit, and a platform that helps streamline and scale how local food is bought and sold.”
Food and farms are the roots of Julie’s memories of growing up in Iowa. Summer meals came straight from her mother’s enormous garden, cattle socialized and corn grew out the giant window of the hayloft on her grandfather’s farm, and her aunts canned every summer’s harvest in her grandmother’s kitchen. She loved every minute of it – the sweetness of peas straight off the vine, driving tractors at an early age, the sweltering heat and camaraderie of a kitchen canning – and hoped to someday show her own kids the same treasures.
Julie and her boys
Before settling into a farmstead, however, Julie migrated from Iowa to Silicon Valley where she met Elon Musk, who was starting a new venture called X.com – which eventually became known as PayPal, the online payment service. Julie joined as employee number five and the company’s first female, and over time held three different titles as vice president – of product, operations & customer service, and public relations & communications.
In addition to serving as company spokesperson to top-tier publications like Forbes, Fortune, and The New York Times, Julie built a customer service center from scratch in Omaha, Nebraska, from 0 to 100 people in exactly six weeks. Today that center employs nearly 2,000 people, making PayPal the second largest employer in the city.
“Being part of PayPal in the early days was extremely fun and drama-filled,” Julie says. “We created something completely new but never knew for sure if the credit card companies, the government, or the banking regulators would shut us down on any given day.”
Prior to PayPal, Julie managed public relations and marketing for Frank Quattrone’s technology-focused investment banking group at DMG Technology Group (then Deutsche Bank Tech Group) during the high-tech and early dot-com booms.
Today Julie lives in Colorado on a small farmstead with her two boys, four Jersey cows, fifty chickens, and a cat with the inaccurate name of Pumpkin. “As a kid I knew there was something magical in eating straight from the garden,” Julie says. “I’m thrilled to provide that experience to my own kids, and to work with Local Orbit, who is making it easier for everyone to get food from farm to table.”
We were so pleased this morning to see this excellent article on Detroit Eastern Market published on the homepage of MetroMode.com. Eastern Market “is the most comprehensive food hub in the nation” according to its president, Dan Carmody. Understanding their methods and learning from their model could significantly increase the amount of regional food hubs in our nation – creating jobs, improving the health of our communities, and growing the small farm sector in an unprecedented way.
Dan Carmody, president of Eastern Market
We’ve excerpted a few of our favorite quotes from the article, especially the piece that shares how we are aiding in Eastern Market’s efforts, but please make sure to read the full story here.
{The food hub helps small farmers grow the size and yield of their farms and create other viable sales outlets that aren’t community supportive agriculture (CSA), a farmer’s market, or direct sales to restaurants because “farmers have to balance their time between selling food and growing it,” Carmody says. “It’s the next step in the devolution of a food system into a stronger regional system, encouraging smaller growers.”}
{Carmody and his staff have increased the profile of local and regional growers supplying the market, says Debbie Tropp, branch chief of the Agricultural Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is conducting a two-year study of Eastern Market. “They’re doing their level best to try to revitalize the regional food system in a way that may not have happened prior.”
Eastern Market is considered a “hybrid market,” where wholesale and retail activities occur, one of about 50 in the nation, according to James Barham, agricultural economist and head of a USDA interagency task force on regional food hubs. “Hardly any of these would be classified regional food hubs. Mainly, it’s a property manager who’s leasing space…. What Dan is doing is pretty remarkable. He could have set up as a property manager and leased space. Eastern Market would have continued to exist.”
Food hubs are a fairly new designation for comprehensive agricultural centers that provide a catalytic impact on the regional food system, says Barham. “Because of the strong relationship regional food hubs have with producers, and because of the demand for locally grown product, producers are scaling up their operations, they’re hiring more staff, they’re planting more crops, they’re switching practices from more conventional to more sustainably produced because there’s higher customer demand for that type of product.”
Eastern Market has established a virtual food hub to connect the region’s growers and buyers in an unprecedented way using Local Orb.it. “The buyer can go online and pick Eastern Market as their hub, see a variety of our growers, our specialty product vendors, and be able to order from these different types of growers on one purchase order,” says Christine Quane, wholesale market coordinator for Eastern Market. “That allows growers to tell their story, inventory their items and put their wholesale pricing [on display]. They pick their products, make their orders, and the two meet on a set day — saving time for both. By knowing the story behind the grower, they know where their food is coming from. They’ll know who the growers are and how they grow.”}
Local Orbit team members Becky Noffsinger and Patty Cantrell attended the Farm Routes to Prosperity Summit in Traverse City last month and I just had an opportunity to read Diane Connor’s report of the event. The region is well on its way to achieving its 10-year goal of increasing the resilience and doubling the value of the region’s local food and agricultural economy by 2019. With two recently-launched Local Orbit marketplaces in Benzie County, we’re please to provide the online infrastructure to help make this happen. We’re particularly excited by Rob Sirrine’s map of farm-to-school growth in the past six years. More please!
When Rob Sirrine, chairman of the Northwest Michigan Food & Farming Network, clicked on his favorite slide during his presentation to the third annual Farm Routes to Prosperity Summit, the audience responded with an appreciative “oooh!”
More than 100 people were there on Feb. 4, gathered in Traverse City to chart and plan for making more progress in the eat-local, buy-local food movement that is slowly but surely changing northwestern Lower Michigan’s farm and food economy.
The region is home to a unique, Lake Michigan-powered microclimate that supports a beautiful landscape of fruit orchards; tourism-related farm stands, wineries and breweries; and nearby fields of vegetables, livestock, and small dairies. Members of the Food & Farming Network—a diverse group of farm, nonprofit, health, community garden, land preservation, business, school, and economic development professionals—want to not just preserve it, but grow it.
Why did Dr. Sirrine’s slide show take their breath away? Because one of this MSU Extension educator’s slides showed a map with just one dot on it, marking the location of Central Grade School in the Traverse City Area Public Schools District. In 2004, that school launched the region’s first “farm to school” program, serving fresh, locally grown produce from area farmers in school lunches.
Food systems 101 in five minutes – from a smart, home-schooled kid at TedXNextGenerationAsheville. Here’s hoping the Future Farmers of America share his perspective.
Most farmers who work farmer’s markets and farms stands are proud of what they produce. And many want to tell just how they do it.
There’s the grass-fed beef farmer who firmly believes you don’t need to use grain to finish beef cattle. Or another farmer who collects stinging nettles with gloves to provide greens early in the season.
Then again I never returned to the farm stand where the farmer talked glowingly about the power of Roundup, a herbicide that’s toxic to wildlife. I understand that it makes his job easier, but today there are a multitude of great alternatives.
Be Curious and Polite
Best not to turn the questions for farmers into an interrogation. Show your curiosity. Slow down. Listen and learn. Chat as you shop. Other shoppers nearby might pick up a thing or two. If the market isn’t too crowded, start slowly.
“Beautiful day. So how’s the season been going for you this year?” Sometimes better to start with “is there anything here you’re particularly proud of? Anything unusual?”
“When did you pick this fruit or vegetable? Is it ready to eat today? How do I store it?” Chefs will tell you that berries picked after a heavy rain are worthless. This year’s peaches were particularly insipid for the same reason. Some items like winter squash can last for months if stored correctly.
“Are you able to use organic or sustainable principles on the farm?” It’s so easy to ask “is this organic” but the fact is many farmers do not have the time and in some cases the money for organic certification. That doesn’t mean they don’t follow those very same principles on the farm.
“Does this produce come from your farm?” Small farms can grow an amazing amount of food but it is unlikely that they will have fruit trees and kale growing on the same patch. But that’s okay if your farmer gets produce from growers they know. It’s very likely they can talk about their neighbors’ practices. read on
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.
Mark Bittman posted a good piece by Russ Parsons. It addresses conflicting perspectives in the increasingly audible conversation about building a better food system. Parsons proposes a set of shared principles to anchor serious discussion about our shared problem. While I question the 20th century “agricultural miracle” to which he refers, and not everyone in either “camp” views the issues in such extremes, the article, published in the LA Times earlier this week, bears re-posting here.
Let’s not join one of the armed camps deeply suspicious of one another shouting past each other.
The issues facing agriculture today are much more complicated than lining up behind labels such as “local” and “organic.” (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
One of the more pleasing developments of the last decade has been the long-overdue beginning of a national conversation about food — not just the arcane techniques used to prepare it and the luxurious restaurants in which it is served, but, much more important, how it is grown and produced. The only problem is that so far it hasn’t been much of a conversation. Instead, what we have are two armed camps deeply suspicious of one another shouting past each other (sound familiar?).
On the one side, the hard-line aggies seem convinced that a bunch of know-nothing urbanites want to send them back to Stone Age farming techniques. On the other side, there’s a tendency by agricultural reformers to lump together all farms (or at least those that aren’t purely organic, hemp-clad mom-and-pop operations) as thoughtless ravagers of the environment.
Well, at least we’re thinking about it, so I suppose that’s a start. But the issues we’re facing are not going to go away, and they are too important to be left to the ideologues. What I’d like to see happen in the next decade is a more constructive give-and-take, the start of a true conversation.
With that goal in mind, I’d like to propose a few ground rules that might help move us into the next phase — fundamental principles that both sides should be able to agree on.
If we want an ecologically sound local food system that’s available to everyone, we’ll need to figure out how to reinvest in…lost infrastructure. Small farmers can’t do it on their own. (Tom Philpott)
Philpott is a new farmer who left a career as business writer five years ago. Newsweek published his recent essay on the relationship between government farm subsidies, the cost of food, and how these funds can be better used to support small farms.
He looks at the consolidation of our food system; the loss of local food processing infrastructure; and the environmental, health and safety costs that have been enabled hundreds of billions of dollars in agriculture subsidies.
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.
I’m a big fan of Springwise, a site that spots intriguing business ideas (where else would I have learned about Van Gogh is Bipolar a restaurant in Quezon City, Philippines?).
A recent post highlights an unexpected – and very cool – local food distribution model that offers convenience and direct farm-to-consumer sales.
In a world wrapped up in complex supply chains, small farmers are in a catch-22: sell to the supermarkets and get less cash for your carrots, or spend a lot more time and effort trying to sell directly to customers. Consumers, meanwhile, are torn between loyalty to local businesses and the convenience of those established supply chains. Now a German farm, Peter-und-Paul-Hof, has found a solution in the form of… vending machines. The result of a collaboration between the farm and vending manufacturer Stuewer, the specially designed Regiomat machines currently sell fresh milk, eggs, butter, cheese, potatoes and sausage in thirteen German towns and communities.
It’s not a solution that sprung up overnight. Initially, Peter-und-Paul-Hof were operating a service delivering milk to their customers. Finding this too time-consuming, they began encouraging customers to collect the milk from fridges on their farm, which proved successful and inspired them to use vending machines as a more versatile solution. The Regiomat machines can be placed outdoors 365 days a year as long as they’re under a roof (some have even been placed alongside hiking trails in Switzerland), effectively giving locals a 24-hour farmers’ market and farmers a lot more free time. By cutting out the middleman, this system also offers potential savings over retail stores. An update to the traditional farm stand that is beneficial to both farmers and local-loving consumers, this is definitely a concept we can see spreading to other parts of the world.
What if a version of the Regiomat was installed in schools throughout the US – both for student snacks during the day and quick grocery shopping for parents and staff on their way home?
