A couple posts back, we introduced you to a new concept which underlies our vision and mission.  For those who missed it, we are set out to bring the power back to the people and build up local, healthy food systems through the “Economies of Community”.  Helping small farms promote the community supported agriculture (CSA) model and providing a platform for customers to share information are some of the ways we enable individuals to join forces and create a different future.  This week, we were lucky enough to sit down with Benzi Ronen, CEO and Founder of Farmigo, and hear from him how merging internet networking platforms with back to the earth organic farming can inspire a food revolution.

Computers and smart phones find a new importance out in the fields

What would you say is the number one factor that differentiates the Economies of Community from the traditional notion of the Economies of Scale?

Economies of Scale is built on the premise that the more you can centralize, the better off the “system” becomes. Economies of Community is the complete opposite; the more you can decentralize and empower individuals, the better off everyone is.
From an economic perspective, economies of scale is based on a very high fixed cost for the system and a low variable cost per unit. The fixed costs are then shared by the large number of units being manufactured which is why the more you produce, the cheaper each unit becomes. Economies of Community has low fixed cost and high variable costs. This is why it is easy to start new communities since there is a low cost to get started.  Each community sources produce directly from local producers which removes the need for warehouses and retail stores resulting is cost savings.
It is important to note that there are “side effects” resulting from a centralized system which are often not taken into account when comparing the two systems. The centralized system relies on huge farms that use chemical fertilizers and pesticides which have a deteriorating effect on our environment. Food travels thousands of miles before it reaches its target retail store which reduces its freshness by the time it reaches the consumer. The environmental costs and lower quality food which raise our health care costs are usually not taken into account when assessing the efficiency of a centralized food system.

How did you come up with the concept?  

I have been part of the Internet revolution which has been disrupting almost every industry. The Internet is the ultimate equalizer using the following techniques:

• **collapse a supply chain (disintermediation)
• **enable peer to peer sharing (collaborative consumption)
• **source from the community (crowdsourcing)

The more I learned about our food system it became clear that we need a dramatically different way to source our food and that the Internet could facilitate this change.

Farmigo has built Internet software that enables communities across the country to create their own decentralized food system and source directly from local farms. We stand on the shoulders of giants since we could never have done this without learning from farmers who have pioneered selling direct to consumers for a decade as well as other Internet businesses who have been building similar systems in their respective industries.

Friends tell friends where to find the best tasting, freshest local food

Are there other examples of industries or brands that you consider part of the Economy of Community?

While Farmigo is one of the first Internet companies that is enabling the “Economy of Community” to disrupt one of the most traditional industries – food, I think we will see many more companies tapping into the power of the community to disrupt other industries. Another opportunity is aggregating neighborhoods via the Internet to provide them with group buying discounts.

Are you looking to reverse the negative effects of the industrialized food system entirely? Is that conceivable? What is your long term vision of Farmigo, both in terms of its growth as a brand and of its effects on agriculture?

By enabling organic farms to sell direct and getting higher margins than selling wholesale, we shift the economics in favor of sustainable agriculture. Consumers like buying direct from harvest and from the grower and value the authenticity and stories of the farms. Farmigo’s role is to elevate the farm brands and give them a platform to build richer relationships direct with the consumer.

Ever wonder what happens to animals from industrial farms who don’t live up to their intended efficiency levels?  The thought can be too difficult to bear.  That is, until the folks at Grant Family Farms in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains started to view this tragedy as an opportunity.

Photo Credit: Grant Family Farms

In industrial farming operations (yes, even in organic industrial farming operations) hens are often dropped when they reach below an 80% efficiency level.  In large scale industrial operations, the cost of maintaining the life of a hen at low efficiency outweighs any potential financial gain from keeping that hen in production.  However, these hens could easily go on living happy and carefree, laying an egg or two a day, for another number of years.  This is where the innovators at Grant saw the potential for an amazing program that could save these hens lives while providing local families with a fresh source of eggs through the practice of raising backyard chickens.  The Hen Again program was born just over a year ago to address these two parallel issues.

The practice of keeping backyard hens for fresh eggs has become increasingly popular around the country, as the local food movement gains momentum.  Using the numbers from Grant’s Hen Again program as a basis for analysis, you can purchase 6 hens for $35.  Each hen lays one to two eggs a day, that’s easily up to a dozen eggs a day.  Compare that to the approximate $3 per dozen eggs you pay in the supermarket, and you’ve paid off the price of your hens within the first week!  Just think about all the money you will save on eggs over the next few years that these chicks enjoy the luxury of your back yard.  In addition to the incredible financial savings, eggs from backyard hens are believed to have less cholesterol and higher levels of omega 3 and other essential vitamins than industrial eggs.  Hens also play an important role in your backyard ecosystem, controlling pests and fertilizing the ground as they go.

Within the first year of operation, Grant Farms rescued over 760 hens from organic, industrial operations and found them new homes with members of the farms community supported agriculture (CSA) program and other interested parties in the area.  Those who are interested in having their own backyard flock hens can come purchase the hens at Grant Family Farms every Saturday morning.  While the team at Grant certainly wish they could rescue hens from all across the industrial scene, maintaining their own organic standards is very important, and so the chickens they rescue comes exclusively from organic industrial farms.  This has the added benefit for families who adopt hens, as they can rest assured that the hens never received dangerous antibiotics or steroids.

Pool party in the backyard! Photo Credit: Grant Family Farms

What’s more is that the folks at Grant don’t just throw the hens your way and wish you luck.  The Grant community all chips in to provide the support necessary to get your coop up and running.  One very knowledgeable volunteer, a “backyard chicken aficionado” if you will, is always available to field questions and give advice for those first time chicken keepers.  Another volunteer, a member of the Grant CSA, builds chicken coops which are made available to hen adopters through the farm’s website.  Other community members have taken on the role of filtering through the legal mumbo-jumbo to make sure that backyard hens are actually allowed in your neighborhood.  In Fort Collins, backyard chicken coops have been legal and plentiful for a while now, but in urban areas such as Denver, the practice has only just been made legal.  Depending on what pocket of Colorado you’re in, the community hen team at Grant can help you figure out what your needs are.

The same kind of thoughtful practices that inspired the Hen Again program at Grant carries over into everything they do and to the fruits and vegetables they grow.  While Saturdays are the days for adopting hens at Grant Family Farms, you can have access to their wide array of locally grown organic produce all week long by joining their CSA program.  If you live in Colorado, why not consider letting Grant help you transition your food supply from the supermarket to the farm, and even to your own back yard.  Find out more!

If you’ve visited our homepage lately or been following us in the press, you might have noticed some of the new terminology we have been entering into our lexicon.  Our ultimate goal is to create significant change within our food system, and we all know that we cannot create change by using the same old terminology and ideology.  That’s why we have started to invent a new language, one that reflects the values which we wish to inspire.  We want to make sure you’re speaking this language with us.
A familiar phrase in the business world is the notion of “Economies of Scale”.  This term refers to the efficiency gained as industries and companies grow.  Let’s take, for example, the idea of a supermarket chain.  These businesses work in a “hub and spoke” system, where product moves from the farm to a central warehouse, where it is then distributed to numerous different retailers.  The larger the network grows, the more farms they are able to purchase from, and the more retail locations they are able to open.  The sheer size of the operation makes purchasing, distributing, and marketing the product much more cost efficient.  Industrial farming works much in the same way.  A farmer who grows only corn is able to buy a tractor which is designed specifically for the cultivation of corn.  The cost of the tractor is spread out along many ears of corn, making it quite affordable per unit of product.  That our modern food system is modeled after the same, centralized system as our industrial world is really quite frightening.

But the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model is a decentralized system.  There are no hubs in the CSA model, only spokes, as farms deliver directly to their customers.  We are no fools, and we know that to be viable in today’s society, you need some kind of a large support network.  We also understand that at the end of the day, price plays a major role in our purchasing decisions, but we want to eat food that we know is fresh, locally grown, nutritious, organic, and delicious.  So how does our decentralized CSA model compete with the centralized model of big industry?
That is exactly where the COMMUNITY part of Community Supported Agriculture comes into play.  Here at Farmigo, we’ve tipped the “Economies of Scales” and created the “Economies of Community” as a way to put the power back into the hands of the people.  We envision a model where the community rises up and takes an active role in enabling small farms to grow, changing the face of our current food system.  Through the Farmigo platform, the Economies of Community helps stabilize the business sustainability of our farms in three distinct ways.

Success is found at the hands of the community

1. Marketing — While the traditional business model has a centralized marketing scheme featuring large-scale, national ads, marketing through the Economies of Community is all about word of mouth.  Our customers spread the word through social media, and farms rely heavily on referrals to expand their business.
2. Distribution — In the Economies of Community, individuals play a large role by offering their homes, offices, or schools to be delivery sites from one farm to a number of customers.  This group purchasing power enables a small farm to spread his delivery costs, making it more viable to reach more people. (Find out more about starting a pick up location.)
3. Transfer of Information — Community platforms for sharing knowledge, such as recipes and other tips to help each other figure out how to use new veggies, enable the community to become engaged in the market and take ownership over their food.

 
In short, with the Economies of Community model that we promote here at Farmigo, we allow the decentralized system to become stronger and enter into a fair competition with the industrial model based on the Economies of Scale.  Under this pretense, we do what we do to enable YOU, the community, to band together and create lasting change.  Together, we can disrupt the industrial food industry and bring fresh, organic produce to the tables of all!

At a conference way back in 2007, Brad and Jenny Stufflebeam, of Home Sweet Farm outside of Houston, TX, were inspired by a pair of California farmers who worked together to create a community supported agriculture (CSA) program in their area.  Since then, they have been brewing up a plan not only to expand their business, but to actually change the paradigm that underlies agribusiness, and big business generally.  As Brad wrote so eloquently in his blog, big business thinking revolves around the notion that one should “get big or get out” whereas the Stufflebeams are trying to promote a new paradigm of “stay small and stay in”!

What if our whole food system was a series of networks of small farms selling direct to the customer?? (photo credit: www.drought.gov)

As many small, local, farms committed to growing organic produce are popping up in the greater Houston area, Brad and Jenny refuse to see them as the competition.  Instead, they have opened up their arms, embraced the unknown, and shifted the emphasis from competitor to collaborator by creating a network to strengthen their CSA.  Recently, Home Sweet Farm got together with 2 other members of the Farmigo family, Sand Creek Farm and Twin Persimmons Farm, and have formed a network which we believe will change the way Houstonians eat and relate to their food!

All three farms market to the same area, and the network between them allows them to become stronger and serve the public.  Not only do the farms recommend one another, but they also share items to round out their CSA shares and expand their webstore selections.  For example, Sand Creek has a dairy on site and therefore Twin Persimmons and Home Sweet Farm are able to both offer their customers various locally crafted cheeses.  The farms also help each other out in their marketing efforts and in operational duties such as delivering products to one another.  As Jenny said when we spoke, “It’s the idea that we realized that we’re not in this alone, that we can’t do it alone, and that having a farming community supporting one another is really beneficial and helpful”.

One of the underlying principles of the Houston farm network is to continue to expand on methods that allow farmers make direct sales to customers.  Lately, large aggregators and distributors have begun to infiltrate the organic market in Houston and around the nation.  The sheer size of their operations gives them an upper hand and enables them to talk farmers down in prices, putting some small farmers in the position where they are struggling because they are getting paid a minute amount for what they are growing.  By working together, the farms in the network have formed a strong alliance which allows them to maintain the integrity of organic agriculture and the community supported agriculture model, as well as differentiate themselves from the model of an organic distributor.

Having a network of farms working together not only guarantees variety in the CSA box, it also helps take the risk out of joining a CSA, or running one for that matter.  The network offers protection against crop loss in the case of a natural disaster, drought, or extreme weather which threatens one farm’s produce or livelihood.  It also offers the kind of support small farmers need to succeed.  Brad and Jenny are hopeful about the model for the future and the possibility of expanding to include more farms or reach out to more areas.  Yet they don’t want to get too big and lose sight of the values which got them going in the first place.  The main goal is to keep it friendly and familiar, and ensure that the farmers involved are selling direct to the customers.  After all, sharing is caring, and by sharing the market and the work, these farms are proving that they care about their customers, their farms, and working towards a new, local food system.

At Ambrose Family Farm, located just outside Charleston, SC on Wadmalawa Island, the concept of “Waste not, Want Not” plays a major role in both the farm’s agricultural practices and business development.  Since Babs and Pete Ambrose bought the farm in 1976, they have been on a journey of discovery, figuring out the best ways to work the land and reach a market for their product.  Now, over 30 years later, with a vibrant wholesale and restaurant supply business, a booming Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, and the successful Stono Market and Tomato Shed Cafe, they seem to have things figured out.

Farmer Pete out in the hoop-house

For years, Pete has been using progressive methods on the farm which have attracted the attention of local consumers and big players such as the USDA and the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, who come to learn from the master himself.  While such departments have local initiatives for recycling trash and creating compost for sale, such compost has never been known for making a significant difference in crop growth.  However, the compost that Pete and Babs make on their farm is extremely high in nitrogen and works fantastically.  The Ambrose blend is not for sale since, as Babs explains, “It takes all the compost we can make just to run our farm”, but the agricultural community of South Carolina is certainly interested in learning some of these progressive methods, and, we hope, eventually applying them in the creation of large amounts of compost by the municipality.

Year round growing and the use of hoop-houses are other progressive steps in practice at Ambrose Family Farm.  Although the weather in SC allows for year round growing, Babs says many of the local organic farms she knows focus their efforts in the fall and spring when the weather is most temperate.  Yet the motto holds true here too, and the Ambroses are not willing to waste any time when they could potentially be growing food for their community!

In fact, it was in an attempt to reach out to the community that the Stono Market came into existence.  So many folks were interested in getting to know the farm, but the farm itself was not so easily accessible.  This push inspired Babs and Pete to buy an old railroad station farming depot on John’s Island and renovate it into the Stono Market back in 1987.  Today, it also serves as another distribution center for their community supported agriculture program.

The Tomato Shed Café evolved out of a necessity to use up all the farm produce that was brought out to the Market.  According to Babs, “We found ourselves having to discard items that are not retail quality but are still perfect for eating.  Rather than discard those items, we started cooking them and serving them”.  The Cafe has since grown into a large part of the family business, with over 150 lunches served every day.  And the customers must love the menu, because many of them can be found visiting the Stono Market after lunch and picking up a few locally grown ingredients to take home and try to prepare the dishes themselves.

This farm’s commitment to reducing and reusing their waste efficiently, turning it into delicious, fresh fruits and vegetables, is impressive to say the least.  For those in the Charleston area who are interested in getting to know Ambrose Family Farm a little better, consider making the trip out to their remote location during the “U-Pick” Season!  Summer is just around the corner and strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, tomatoes, and more are all available for the picking.  Bring your family and friends, wear your best work clothes, and head on out to the farm to get a real Ambrose experience, and join other community members in taking a stand for fresh, local produce.

Check out how the folks at Ambrose get your CSA boxes ready for delivery!

Organic, permaculture, biodynamic – there are so many different styles and methods for sustainable farming and community supported agriculture these days.  We have all heard about local organic farms and what they really are, but here’s a new one — Veganic Farming!

Way out west, in Wilcox, AZ, Byron and Janice Smith and their family lead a vegan lifestyle.  When they started Sunizona Family Farms in 1996, they were determined to extend their vegan beliefs into their agricultural practices, taking the concept to a whole new level.  Through years of trial and error, Byron and Janice experimented with different combinations of materials and methods to develop a new way of farming that is natural and adheres to their values.

So what does it mean to be vegancially grown?  As Evan, Sunizona’s CSA Manager told us, it’s actually quite simple, “There are no animal based inputs or by-products being used on the farm at all, besides the inevitable insect or worm found in the soil.”
None… that means not even the widely accepted method that many local organic farmers use of applying manure as fertilizer is being used.  The veganic method of farming is based on the concept of caring for the soil by preventing the buildup of heavy metals in the soil and reducing the risk for the spread of animal borne diseases such as e. coli.  Healthy soil, after all, is the foundation of healthy food.

The Biomass Heated Greenhouse at Sunizona

As an alternative to traditional chicken and cow manures, the folks at Sunizona use other creative materials to increase soil fertility, such as ash produced from their unique Biomass Heating system for their greenhouse.  Instead of burning oil for heat, this system burns pecan shells from a neighboring farm to create the amount of energy needed to keep the greenhouses operational through the cold winter nights.  Pecan shells actually emit large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere when they decompose naturally, as Evan explained to us.  The biomass heating system then has a double duty — gas is captured and converted to energy instead of being released to the atmosphere, and the ashy by-product is an incredibly rich fertilizer to put back into the earth.

Sunizona has also developed their own special plant based fertilizer made out of a mix of locally sourced alfalfa, wheat and a few other secret ingredients, which will soon be available for you to purchase on their website and use in your own garden.

It is this kind of forward thinking that has enabled Sunizona Family Farms to flourish, and with such pioneers at the wheel, along with an unwavering commitment to sustainable methods, we can expect to see great things coming out of this farm.  That must be what the customers think, because within just the first year of operating a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, the farm exceeded its original goal of 150 members and were able to sign up 400 members. This is a success that Evan attributes to the fact that Sunizona is a unique model which is “run by a family who truly believes that they are not just farming to pay the bills but they are doing it because it is a way of life that they really appreciate”.

Although Evan claims that the product sells itself, we here at Farmigo think there’s something extra in the mix — as the son and grandson of commodity crop growers, Evan has farming in his heart and soul. This was apparent as he spent a year on the road visiting different restaurants, businesses, and farmer’s markets, to establish pick up sites and get the CSA up and running.  It is the passion shared by Byron, Janice, Evan, and the entire Sunizona family for veganic, locally grown, fresh food that has attracted and retained hundreds of people to the farm.

Do you live in the Tucson area?  As the membership base continues to grow and exceed expectations, don’t get left in the dust!  Join a Sunizona pick up site or start your own today!

Step into the offices of the Venice Beach, CA based music-tech start up, Miso Media, one afternoon and you might be surprised to find the team gathered around a Juicer. Fresh juice has been all the rage at Miso Media in the past two months since the team began to receive weekly boxes of locally grown fruits and veggies from local organic farms delivered straight to the office by Farmigo partner, Underwood Family Farms.

JUICE -- the "new" coffee!

Brandon Goldman, Farmigo Local Hero and Miso Media team member, is responsible for the shift towards healthy eating in his office.  Brandon was intrigued by Farmigo when he saw us present at TechCrunch Disrupt last fall and immediately reached out to us to start his own Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) pick up site at his office.

Easy access to nutritious veggies was a mega game changer for the way the team interacts with their food.  Brandon, a vegan himself, convinced the team to sign up for a one month trial period during in which the team received one communal CSA share as well as individual shares. Even the hesitant team members are really glad they signed up for the program. Now, following the trial, a truck pulls up every Tuesday delivering boxes of locally grown organic produce for the office kitchen and two thirds of the Miso team to take home as well.

In addition to juicing on their breaks, Brandon says the team has begun cooking in the office, creating a new kind of shared experience around lunch.  Not only does the team sit together over a fresh meal, but they also share recipes and tips for using some of the unusual seasonal veggies they receive in the box, such as Kohlorabi.  “We all talk about how much healthier we eat now.  People have realized that they probably weren’t eating enough vegetables.  Now we are probably eating more than the minimum amount than we need, but everybody can agree that eating a lot of vegetables is healthier.”

On the home front, Brandon and his wife, Sherri, have enjoyed being forced to think outside the box and cook creatively.  Searching for recipes that include a lot of vegetables or just adding new veggies to some of their existing recipes has become an outlet for getting to know new flavors.  “For me, green vegetables used to be broccoli, spinach or asparagus.  But now we will get other leafy greens like swiss chard, and we are even eating the greens from the carrots!”

So what about the rest of you?  Want to become a local hero and start a pick up site of your own?  After helping some of his co-workers get over their hesitations about joining a CSA and seeing how much they are enjoying their experience, Brandon encourages you to get more people signed up.  “It’s pretty low risk to sign up, and it could potentially change the way you eat for the better.  I think it’s a small price to pay and if you actually do it, it might pleasantly surprise you.”  And who knows, maybe you will find yourself switching out your coffee for juice next time around…

Buying fresh and locally grown food is a great way to support your local community, help the environment, and eat healthier. But what good is fresh, wholesome food without the perfect recipe?

We know plenty of you foodies out there have recipes that would knock our socks off. Farmigo wants to see the kind of amazing recipes you use to cook the great food you receive from local farms.

So let’s see what you’ve got! Farmigo is putting on a contest to find who can come up with the most delicious meal, made using seasonal and locally grown food. The contest will be judged by professional chef and friend of Farmigo, Tifanny Friedman. Tifanny was our guest chef when we sat down with tech maven Robert Scoble for a delicious meal. See the video here.

The contest is simple: Go to the contest tab on our Facebook page. Click on each of the three “farm boxes.” Two of these boxes are for vegetables while the final one is for meats and fish. When you click on a farm box, ingredient options for the contest will appear. Choose one ingredient from each box, and use the comment box below to describe to us how you would use them to make a delicious meal. Recipes will be rated by “likes.” The five recipes with the most likes will be entered to win the contest.

Farmigo strives to help people provide delicious, healthy and locally sourced meals for their families. This contest will help everybody using Farmigo to find tasty recipes for the foods they love.

Farmigo CEO Benzi Ronen recently had the opportunity to sit down with tech blogger Robert Scoble in the Rackspace offices in downtown San Francisco and talk about Farmigo, locally grown food, and sustainable agriculture.

Scoble is a veteran in the tech community and has had the opportunity to meet with up-and-coming startups as well as some of the giants of Silicon Valley, so it was great to hear his perspective on Farmigo.

Since our meeting coincided with Scoble’s birthday, we took the opportunity to provide him with a special meal prepared from locally sourced ingredients including Farmigo partner farms Terra Firma, Tara Firma, and Siren SeaSA. As you can see in the video, there’s nothing more delicious than fresh, locally grown food.

Take a look at the interview below.

Farmigo is a unique startup since we are using some of the most advanced technology and the power of the Internet to allow consumers to reconnect with what is – or at least should be – a very low tech industry.

Of course today, the food industry is complex, and relies heavily on things like chemical pesticides, antibiotics, and genetically modified food. It would certainly be a welcome change to use tech to make our food system more simple, and whole lot better in the process.

We would also like to thank Tiffany Friedman for preparing this delicious meal.

Image Credit: goo.gl/tqLxw

Since today is Valentine’s Day, and this is officially the holiday of love, we’re spending some time here at Farmigo thinking about what the word means. It’s certainly one of the most powerful words in the English language and it’s one of those words that can mean different things to different people.

So we decided to take a closer look at “love”, letter by letter (a bit in the spirit of Nat King Cole), to show you what love means to us.

L – local. We are inspired by local farmers, local heroes and caring citizens who are working to change our food system for the better. This effort takes many shapes, but it’s always driven by a concern and a desire to improve local communities and to provide them with healthier, fresher, sustainable food.

O – Organic. Farmigo loves to work with organic farms in order to provide food that is more sustainable than what is produced by the industrial food system. We are always able to trace every veggie, fish, dairy or cut of meat to its source even if some local farms are not necessarily certified organic according to the USDA. You know the reason — it’s difficult for small farms to afford the expensive certification process but that’s why.

V – Vegetables. One of the best parts of getting food straight from the farm, is enjoying Vegetables that are fresh from harvest. That’s what ‘V’ is for us, veggies that haven’t been loaded with chemical pesticides so they can sit for weeks on a shelf. We prefer real food that goes direct from the farmer to you.

E – Economical. We believe that for our food system to be sustainable it also needs to be Economical, and that’s what E stands for to us. The Farmigo system helps connect consumers directly with farmers. This helps cut out a lot of the wasteful steps in between that hurt the income for farmers and therefore increase costs for consumers. We want to help build a food system that is more economically viable for farmers and for you.

So that’s what “love” means to Farmigo. What does “love” mean to you? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.