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Farm groups exploring food hub opportunities


Work of local groups dovetails with provincial initiative


by PETER MITHAM CRESTON—The BC Food


Hub Network being funded by the province sees food hubs as the linchpin holding together the opportunities local growers and food processors are trying to tap into, but many farm groups are already using the model to broaden their reach. Kootenay Farms


Marketplace, a food hub based in Creston, is a one- year pilot project developed by Fields Forward Society with funding from the Columbia Basin Trust and the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC. The hub serves as an online farmers market, aggregating food from local growers, taking orders and making deliveries to buyers each Wednesday. It partners with Spectrum Farms, a social enterprise employing people with disabilities, for office space, cold storage and a storefront. It currently has 16 vendors and about 140 members.


The number of regular


customers has grown slowly since the platform launched last November, but Elizabeth Quinn, strategic planner for Fields Forward and former executive director of the BC Association of Farmers Markets, said orders increased after livestock producers signed on. “As soon as we got meat – beef and lamb – that was the turning point,” she told a food hubs workshop at the BC Association of Farmers Markets annual conference earlier this year. “We need 175 customers buying $20 food baskets a week in order to be profitable, so that’s our goal.” Quinn’s background has helped guide development of the food hub, which is one of at least three in the Kootenays that the Columbia Basin Trust hopes will become part of a regional network. An initial feasibility study completed with provincial support last year identified Creston, Invermere and Nelson as potential locations, and a second report focusing on logistics was launched this summer.


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Stable funding is a critical element in the success of food hubs. Fields Forward took its lead from Cow-op (Cowichan Valley Co-operative Marketplace), whose manager Heather Kaye provided guidance that helped the Kootenay project avoid pitfalls. Kaye helped the society determine that it needed a margin of 25% to be viable. “Whoever’s selling online, they decide what they want


to earn, then we add 25%,” explained Quinn. The approach is one


workshop facilitator Greg McLaren, managing director of the Farm|Food|Drink Business Advisory Team in Nanaimo, praises. “The ones that are working


are the ones that are collaborating,” he told the farmers markets workshop. There’s plenty of room for farmers markets and food hubs to collaborate, he said.


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A recent focus of the BC Association of Farmers Markets has been touting farmers markets as incubators of local producers, allowing them to not only sell product but scale up to a point where they can outgrow their market stall.


This is similar to how many


food hubs see themselves. But the two models have typically operated


independent of one another to date. McLaren said it shouldn’t be that way. “We’re a powerful group


when we look at local food systems and food security,” he said.


While the food hubs the


province is funding have different forms and emphases, McLaren believes projects such as the Kootenay Farms Marketplace, Cow-op and others show what’s possible. “It is different by region,


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and by sector,” he says. However, it’s important for the marketing organizations that connect growers with buyers to be part of the conversations around future hubs. Benefits include access to processing facilities and cold storage, but potentially retail space, too. A food hub might be able to provide space for an outdoor market, for example, as many schools and public facilities do. “[See] the farmers market


that you’re growing as being part of the hub that helps you start to evolve,” he told market representatives. “It creates that win-win opportunity. … It doesn’t make sense not to be integrating, working together.”


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