Each Saturday, farmer Liz Graznak and her workers start their day earlier than daybreak, loading a trailer filled with natural produce, eggs and flowers. They pull out of Completely happy Hole Farm in Jamestown at round 5 a.m.
Upon arriving on the Columbia Farmers Market, the crew units up the farm’s signature vivid orange tents and unloads the day’s providing whereas hoping a bit of it comes again with them.
“For 52 days a yr, and solely 4 hours on every of these days, I’ve to make my dwelling,” Graznak mentioned.
Graznak spends the morning answering prospects’ questions, suggesting objects to attempt to restocking tables. How properly the merchandise promote depends upon quite a lot of elements — the climate, the faculty soccer schedule and value.
Graznak sells the vast majority of her produce direct to customers on the market and thru a CSA, or neighborhood supported agriculture — a mannequin wherein prospects pay an upfront share into a neighborhood farm and obtain packing containers of its merchandise, usually produce, repeatedly all through the season.
Completely happy Hole is an natural farm, that means Graznak doesn’t use artificial chemical compounds and farms with an eye fixed towards the atmosphere, which in the end raises her price of manufacturing — prices she has to cross on to the shopper.
“I cost what I cost in order that I will pay my workers a dwelling wage … in order that I can afford to pay my electrical invoice and put fuel and diesel in my vehicles,” Graznak mentioned. “There’s no additional. It’s not like there’s revenue rolling in.”
For extra small, environmentally sustainable farms like Completely happy Hole to thrive, they want prospects, a majority of whom don’t essentially wish to pay a premium for veggies at a time when meals costs are already excessive.
Graznak mentioned she fields questions on meals costs.
“For no matter purpose, folks don’t wish to pay for meals,” Graznak mentioned.
“After they go to the grocery retailer and so they see that the worth is 35 cents extra, they don’t wish to pay it. And within the final two years, the worth has gone up on the whole lot.”
Price paramount amongst shopper values
Joseph Balagtas is a Purdue College professor of agriculture economics and the director of the Heart for Meals Demand Evaluation and Sustainability, which tracks and measures shopper habits because it pertains to meals markets.
“Shopper habits is a large driver of what’s taking place in meals and agricultural markets, and we should know extra about it,” Balagtas mentioned.
Since January 2022, the middle has been conducting a nationwide survey of grocery customers referred to as the Shopper Meals Insights report.
Every month Balagtas and his colleagues ask prospects what they prioritize once they’re shopping for meals — style, diet, environmental impression, affordability, availability or social duty.
Though there’s a frequent perception that buyers need sustainable merchandise, Balagtas mentioned, every month, on common, environmental impression falls behind style and affordability.
“It’s not that individuals don’t care about sustainability, it’s that it’s not the very first thing,” he mentioned. “It’s not an important factor to us.”
The third most vital meals worth to prospects, in response to the survey, is availability.
“The value needs to be proper, and I’ve to have the ability to discover it on the grocery retailer once I buy groceries,” Balagtas mentioned.
In August, Balagtas additionally surveyed customers about regenerative agriculture — a motion that encourages environmentally sustainable farming practices — and located that 72% assist it.
“We ask customers, ‘Would you assist regenerative agriculture if you must pay increased costs for meals?’” Balagtas mentioned.
In follow-up questions, Balagtas requested customers if they might assist regenerative agriculture if it meant that meals needed to price extra, and assist dropped to 51%.
He additionally requested if customers would assist regenerative agriculture if it required authorities subsidies to assist farmers transition to sustainable strategies, and assist was 55%.
“Once you begin confronting customers with the truth that it’s going to price one thing, assist drops for regenerative agriculture, and that’s vital,” Balagtas mentioned.
Sharing the bounty and the challenges
Liz Graznak didn’t develop up considering she’d be a farmer.
“The idea of proudly owning and working a farm was utterly out of my wheelhouse,” she mentioned.
Throughout graduate college, Graznak grew to become a CSA member, and the mission of connecting with and investing in a neighborhood farmer was so efficient, she grew to become one herself.
Getting prospects to purchase into native, small scale, environmentally sustainable farms and farmers on the entrance finish of the method has lengthy been the purpose of neighborhood supported agriculture, or CSA.
Clare Stoner Fehsenfeld is the chief director of FairShare CSA Coalition, a Wisconsin-based group that’s been aiding CSA farmers for 30 years. She mentioned via CSA, neighborhood members can turn into invested stakeholders in a close-by farm.
“You join at the start of the season and provides a examine to your farm, so that you’re investing within the farm for the season,” Stoner Fehsenfeld mentioned. “Then you definitely sort of share within the bounty and the challenges.”
That bounty is mostly a weekly field of fruits, veggies, eggs, milk or meat — a share of what the farmer produces.
Over time customers have grown extra accustomed to comfort and selection, which in the end hurts the direct-to-consumer mannequin of a CSA.
“Folks need comfort and the concept we will choose and select something we wish on-line,” Stoner Fehsenfeld mentioned.
Stoner Fehsenfeld mentioned the attitudes about CSA from prospects could be a bit extra transactional now, extra about accessing produce than investing in a farmer.
Graznak has tried to fulfill these comfort and selection expectations for purchasers by investing in a software program program that permits them to construct their weekly farm field on-line. Historically, packing containers are packed by what’s accessible and in season.
“They do have the selection of claiming, ‘I don’t actually need the turnips this week. I’d quite have extra peppers,’” Graznak mentioned.
However, the platform prices a number of hundred {dollars} a month, one thing Graznak anticipates she’ll finally need to cross on to prospects.
Group supported agriculture goals to offer everybody a stake within the ups and downs of farming — if a pest takes out a complete crop of broccoli, there’s no broccoli that season.
“I nonetheless love the idea of CSA, and I need CSA to work, like my complete being desires CSA to work,” Graznak mentioned. “But when I used to be being tremendous sensible, it’s not working. There aren’t sufficient prospects that wish to eat that approach.”
Moreover, the upfront price of a farm share is a barrier.
“The mannequin in itself, is intrinsically difficult to individuals who have extra restricted revenue or reside in an space the place they’ll’t entry meals very simply,” Stoner Fehsenfeld mentioned. “So paying up entrance at the start of the season, that’s actually difficult.”
FairShare CSA Coalition now supplies price help for low revenue households who wish to take part in neighborhood supported agriculture to deal with the fairness challenges to the mannequin. This system fills up yearly, proof that many customers do need native, sustainably produced meals.
“I feel that the extra customers who care about these things, the extra farms there could be,” Stoner Fehsenfeld mentioned.
The worth of fine meals
After 14 years, Liz Graznak and Completely happy Hole Farm are a staple on the Columbia Farmers Market. The brilliant orange tents that determine the farm have been initially a present from her sister, Graznak mentioned, that has since grown into their model.
A part of her job each Saturday is to assist prospects perceive the true worth of what she grows. Via conversations on the market, in addition to within the farm’s web site and e-newsletter, Graznak goals to show customers about the price of managing an natural agriculture operation.
But when a buyer is caught on value, there’s little she will do.
“I’m definitely not going to vary their thoughts within the 5 seconds that I’ve to speak to them on the farmers market,” she mentioned.
At midday, the market closes and the Completely happy Hole crew packs the trailer, takes a tough stock and heads again to the farm tucked away within the Missouri River Valley for a chilly beverage.
Though she calls it a “very, very exhausting” approach to make a dwelling, on the finish of the day, Graznak cares about providing meals to her neighborhood that’s domestically grown and good for each you and the atmosphere.
“Our life is all about neighborhood, isn’t it? It’s all in regards to the folks we all know. It’s all in regards to the impacts that we now have with each other,” she mentioned.
“Folks must eat, and I need folks to eat wholesome meals.”
She believes the worth of that matches its value.
Cory W. MacNeil contributed reporting for this story.
A KBIA Information Collection exploring what wants to vary to maintain agriculture. Reported and produced by Jana Rose Schleis. Brand designed by Harrison Petty.
