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Leading Local Farm/Food Aggregator Launches New Tack to Grow Market

Writer's picture: Bob BenensonBob Benenson

Read About Spence Farm's Delivery Boxes


Marty Travis (standing) is a longtime innovator in sustainable agriculture at his Spence Farm in Fairbury, Illinois. In the photo, he is speaking to farmers who participate in his collaborative Down at the Farms operation, which aggregates products from small farms in central Illinois and then sells to restaurant and institutional buyers. Photo from Spence Farm's website.
Marty Travis (standing) is a longtime innovator in sustainable agriculture at his Spence Farm in Fairbury, Illinois. In the photo, he is speaking to farmers who participate in his collaborative Down at the Farms operation, which aggregates products from small farms in central Illinois and then sells to restaurant and institutional buyers. Photo from Spence Farm's website.

Even with the rising consumer demand for locally produced food, the economics of running a small farm are challenging. One of the biggest problems is that small farms are small. By that I mean that few produce enough volume on their own to sell to brick-and-mortar retail, restaurants and institutions.


To address this issue, a rising number of collaborative efforts have taken root to aggregate the products of several (or many) farms, helping those farmers achieve steady customer relationships that they'd have limited opportunities to build on their own.


A pioneering aggregator this week made an important announcement about a new program they are creating to help connect more farms to more customers.


SPENCE FARM/DOWN AT THE FARMS


Marty Travis is such as longtime innovator in promoting sustainable agriculture that he has written a book on the topic — My Farmer, My Customer: Building Business and Community Through Farming Healthy Food — and was a central figure in the 2016 farming documentary Sustainable.


Marty and his family, who own Spence Farm in the central Illinois town of Fairbury, have been aggregating local farm products for almost 20 years, first with an organization called Stewards of the Land, re-launching as Down at the Farms in 2020. That's Marty in the above photo, speaking to farmers in his region at a Down at the Farms meeting.


To date, Spence Farm/Down at the Farms has dealt mostly with restaurants and institutional customers. But they announced this week that they are going direct to consumers with a plan styled after Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscriptions. Here are they describe it, with a contact number if you're interested.


If you want to support small family farms in our community, as well as get fresh groceries every week, boy do we have the perfect opportunity for you! We are going to offer weekly boxes of farm fresh groceries for $100/week. This will be all year round.


We carry products from us here at Spence Farm as well as other farms in the community like Kilgus Farmstead, Always Something, and Healthy Harvest and many many more! Along with products from across Illinois and even fresh weekly shipments of organic citrus from a farm in California that we work with.


Boxes could include everything from fresh fruits and veggies to milk, cheese, eggs, milled goods, syrup, and meats from a number of area farmers.


If this sounds like something you would like to learn more about, please call or text Will [Marty's son] at 815-848-2271.



This is just the latest in a series of innovative approaches that Marty Travis has taken to facilitate business for our region's farmers.


When the COVID shutdowns in 2020 cut off restaurant orders that were vital to Spence Farm and their Down at the Farms partners, Marty joined with Matt Weschler — creator of the Sustainable documentary mentioned earlier — to launch Village Farmstand to sell direct to consumers through an online marketplace and a storefront in the north Chicago suburb of Evanston.


As the crisis abated, Marty and Matt decided to draw back, and fortunately found willing buyers in Rachael and Jesse Smedberg, owners of the regenerative Tulip Tree Gardens Farm in Beecher, Illinois. Local Food Forum on Tuesday (January 28) published their essay about how the national egg shortage has consumers seeking out local farmers, and how important it is for people to consistently buy from local farms in good times as well as bad.


 

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