Ag's Storied Past, Present & Future, A Future driven by Farm Fare

Farm hands at Wayward Seed Farm in Fremont, Ohio; a 30 acre certified organic operation.

The Complex Web of Agriculture’s Mounting Challenges

Large multinationals own our land, our communities and our food.  Multinationals report to shareholders who provide them with capital to operate and grow. The average shareholder is after one thing: financial returns.  This creates competition amongst multinational companies to innovate for cheaper and faster. Thus, innovation is focused on leveraging economies of scale to improve the unit economics at any cost.  Farms consolidate into large land tracts that are managed with chemical inputs to kill weeds and amend depleted soil. The result? Ever-growing yields of cheap food from anywhere in the world, at any moment in time.  But also: dead zones in the Mississippi River Basin where life isn’t supported, deadly algal blooms in the nation’s largest fresh water sources, 600 family dairy farms closing in Ohio in just 2 years, obesity due to the subsidization of corn and sugar, cancer rates sourcing at pace with agricultural yields in India, farmers receiving $0.25-$0.35 on every dollar and an estimated 58 global harvests left due to the severe damage caused to our soils, says the United Nations.  We’ll spare you the full list of calamities.

     How to re-direct agriculture’s course? The age-old fallback: BETTER INFORMATION!

But, we don’t have to shake our heads and give into this future.  The smart application of technology can build a future where communities feed themselves cost effectively, strategically and resiliently.  With technology, family farms coordinate their crop rotations to meet demand specific to their region, and they grow crops their soils are best suited to grow.  And, no, they’re not making these plans by candlelight, the abacus and prayers. We’re empowering family farms with data, that tells them specifically what to plant based on what large customers commit to buy, what their soils are best suited to grow and what others in their region are growing. 

Come back down from outer space: technology alone is not a silver bullet.

Let’s not kid ourselves, better information is equivalent to a gym membership.  If you don’t use it, it just takes up space. That’s why at Farm Fare we’ve enlisted the support of food hubs.  Food hubs are food-based warehouses that work with a group of family farms, have deep relationships within the agriculture community they work and sell and distribute their farmers’ products.  Food hubs used to work alone, and tried to manage every single role that a traditional distributor played...with a scant of the resources. But, when food hubs use the Farm Fare platform, they work as a team, or a “food hub network.”  In this model, hubs see each of their sales grow by more than 66%, supporting farmers that manage their land with cover crops, no tilling practices and pasturing approaches. Networks also enable hubs to grow their own profitability by over 200% because now they share sales effort and logistic resources, minimizing the need to capitalize an entire distribution operation.

A Shared Vision about Using Technology to Solve for Climate and Generate a World with Income Equality

At Farm Fare, we’re not shy about solving a complex & dynamic problem; thus, we’re not a straight tech play. It's true: we believe in humans. Yet, technology is at our core, and with just 38 hubs using our platform, our GPM will be ~66%.  We are elated when we speak stakeholders who share our world vision - the understanding of the dynamics systems in which ag exists, the equally dynamic solutions needed to drive change and the shared attention that farmers and food hubs deserve a financial upside in addition to early capital partners. Most importantly, our partners believe in the critical nature of improving the livelihoods of members of our communities, protecting our waterways & mitigating against the looming climate threat.