Dear Friends and Neighbors, The time is now and so I’ll be brief. What felt…
New partnership established between CAC, Riverwalk Market Fair
By Pamela Thompson, Northfield News
More Information Riverwalk Market Fair will operate through Saturday, October 26 in Northfield’s Bridge Square. Market hours are 9 a.m. through 1 p.m. 2948550a-616c-4292-85f5-cf91b9f37468
This year, the Community Action Center partnered with a few local organizations on a grant to fund the ability to buy local food to stock the food shelf.
According to statistics recorded after the first four weeks of the program, 2,237 pounds of local produce was bought from local farmers and sold to the local CAC food shelf, and $6,200 was paid to local farmers for produce that may have otherwise been thrown out or composted.
Betsy Wentz, RMF Marketing Manager and owner of Rotational Roots, said in mid-September that this past Saturday alone RMF purchased over 1000 pounds of produce from farmers. “We had to run to the CAC to get more boxes to fill with produce and even needed to take an extra trip to the CAC to drop off the vegetables because we couldn’t fit them all into Imminent’s van,” she said. “The impact on farmers was amazing, they sold 1000 pounds more vegetables than they could have without this program. Similarly, the impact on the food shelf is that they have 1000 additional pounds of local tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatillos, jalapenos, herbs, and green beans, all high demand items at the CAC, available for families in our community.”
From the Riverwalk Market perspective, Wentz explained that the program benefits both the farmers and the community.
Wentz said that her organization’s contribution to the program at Riverwalk Market Fair contributed staff time and acted as an aggregator of the produce.
“Each week near the end of the market RMF manager, Derek Meyers, walks around to each farm stand to give the farmers coolers and boxes to fill with their remaining produce,” she said. “The CAC sends us a list each week of what they are looking to buy, from culturally relevant foods to just popular in season produce. The farmers fill the boxes and coolers with their locally grown produce and let us know what their income would have been if they had sold those vegetables during the Saturday market.”
She said that farmers get a check for 75 percent of that number — which is a little above what is usually offered for wholesale pricing for produce — and load up their vegetables and fruits into Imminent Brewing’s van. “Imminent has offered to sponsor Riverwalk Market Fair through use of their van each week for this purpose,” she said.
After all of the produce has been purchased, Riverwalk staff drives the produce to the CAC and unloads it into their cooler so it’s waiting for them on Monday morning to distribute at the food shelf. The CAC staff write RMF a check from the grant funding to pay for the produce and then we do it all again the next week, she said.
Michael Pursell, CAC food access manager, explained that the program was made possible through a USDA-funded Minnesota Department of Agriculture grant called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program (LFPA), whose specific aim is to help organizations like CAC purchase local agricultural products for distribution to the community at no cost.
“CAC is also partnering with Sharing Our Roots and the Rice County Farmer’s Union in this effort, and we’ve promised that 90% of our grant purchases will come from BIPOC, woman-owned, and beginning farms,” said Pursell. “That puts us in a unique position to support business owners who have been historically underrepresented and underserved in American agricultural programs, all while feeding Rice County residents in need.”
Pursell added that the CAC’s partnership with Riverwalk in particular was a natural evolution of CAC’s Farm to Family program, which started as a free mass distribution of local produce during the pandemic and then morphed into a small community donation program through Riverwalk’s farmer’s market. “I love that this latest iteration of the program through LFPA is a win-win-win-win: more sales for local producers, a tool for Riverwalk to recruit and retain vendors, a way for CAC to connect with and support local businesses, and most of all a way to get really beautiful, fresh produce out to the community who needs it,” he said.
Derek Meyers, Riverwalk Market Fair Manager, said that the partnership with CAC to bring local, fresh food to the food shelves at the end of the Riverwalk Market every Saturday has been really amazing. “It’s a win on so many levels: it provides really high quality food to the people who need it most and it connects them in a meaningful way to the agricultural landscape here in Minnesota while also giving our local farmers an added revenue stream and serving as some insurance in case the market is slow,” he said. “It reduces food waste, too, and it also connects our farmers to the community here in Northfield. Food just connects people in really impactful ways and this program allows for more of that connection to happen. It’s really fantastic and I hope we are able to keep this program, and others like it, going well into the future.”
Pa Yang at Tong See Yang Farm said this program makes a big difference, even more on a rainy Saturday when the market was somewhat slow. “We would have had to take all of this home,” Pa said gesturing to the 87 pounds of green beans, cucumbers, green onions, and tomatoes that Derek was purchasing.
Augustine Beeman from Beeman Family Farm said that the program has been a great deal, beyond what he could imagine. “If I’m being honest, I would have expected the percentage paid to farmers to be less,” he said. “We are glad we have this opportunity to sell our produce to the food shelf,” Augustine said while counting 23 pounds of tomatillos, herbs, and peppers.
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