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Farmer Marty Thomas Clarifies View on Government Role in Farm Funding
- Bob Benenson
- Mar 20
- 4 min read
Says Public Funding Helps, But Sees Local Farm Self-Sufficiency as North Star
On March 10, Local Food Forum published an article about how Marty and MariKate Thomas of Kakadoodle Farm in Matteson, Illinois were persevering in the face of twin crises: an avian flu outbreak that costs them their flock of chickens, and a federal funding freeze on reimbursements to farmers who had laid out significant sums of their own money under contracts with USDA.
Despite the setbacks, Marty's essay had a optimistic tone about a future with a more localized and self-sufficient food system. He received some feedback, though, from people who thought he was suggesting that small farmers could eschew government assistance.
This prompted Marty to write this follow-up to clarify his position, while expressing his appreciation for the honest conversation.
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"The whole entire thing of government support not being ok?"
Some have expressed concern about our recent post regarding our ambition to grow Kakadoodle independently of government support. And I honestly appreciate that feedback! It makes me step back and reevaluate my intentions.
I’m a software entrepreneur who somehow found myself in the local food logistics world. I certainly don’t know what is right, or the best way forward. There are many, many more that know WAY more about this than I do. I can just take my best guess and proceed with faith. So please, keep the honest concerns and speculation coming. It will help focus our intention.
But I wanted to take a moment to clarify the no govt thing. It’s not that I don’t think government should be involved. It’s quite the opposite. We have felt the govt support, and it has helped us tremendously. But we’ve always been careful not to build our business to be dependent on it.
Here’s why…
Even before the freeze, government programs came with a fair amount to distraction and challenge. For example, we were told that the LFPA program (one of the programs that have now been frozen) would originally start in Jan 2024. So we invested in an additional 2000 hens just for that program. However it didn’t actually start until the end of March. What that meant for us is that we had to donate all of the eggs that those 2000 hens were producing. That represented a loss of over $40,000 for our company.
Now with the freeze, that notion is being reinforced again.
But the notion goes deeper than a reactionary response. What we want to do is create a new local food system that can support thousands of local farms. Because local farms have the ability to work with nature, and produce healthy food without the use of chemicals.
As wonderful as that sounds, food from local chemical-free farms is expensive. And there is currently not a very large market to move that more expensive food, especially on a local level.
The LFPA program was hoping to solve that. The goal of the program was to establish a market that could support these small farms by purchasing their products at a price that could support them, and then move those products through food banks. A win win.
And it is/was an amazing program. We would drop off eggs at food banks and people would literally cheer. It was amazing!! And so awesome to be a part of. That would never happened without the government.
However, the LFPA program was a temporary initiative, and not meant to stick around forever. It was just meant to help establish the market, and then the funds would eventually go away. But without that program's funds, the food banks could pay only $2.20 for eggs. That’s way less than it costs us to produce the eggs! So if we wanted to continue to work through those markets we would have to:
1. Scale up operations to 30,000+ hens
2. Feed them cheaper feed (with chemicals)
3. Keep them indoors to make collecting more efficient.
So essentially, without the government's money, we would have to become a commodity egg producer to continue to work through the markets LFPA was supporting.
Here’s how I see it (and, again, I could be completely wrong here). In order to create a food system that can deliver chemical-free food to more people, there needs to be a new larger group of consumers that choose to vote with their grocery dollars to support those farmers.
It all goes back to the consumer. If the consumer does that, everything else falls into place. Small farmers now have reliable market to sell into. It’s decentralized so it’s inherently a more resilient and self sustaining, meaning no more empty egg/meat shelves. It's not reliant on government funds which can be uncertain, or go away entirely. And local chemical-free food is consistently flowing into our communities.
So I suppose that’s the heart of what we are trying to do with Kakadoodle. To build that new group of local food consumers that can support chemical-free farmers. And we will continue to be grateful of both our community and government support that will help to make that crazy dream a reality.
- Marty
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