Organic growers bringing produce to the people

Greg Mercer, The Record.com — 19 Jun 2008

KITCHENER

The strawberries are ripe, the tomatoes are plump and the lettuce is crisp.

All they need now are buyers.

A new co-operative of Waterloo, Perth and Wellington county organic farmers are hoping to gather a critical mass of residents who want to eat locally grown, pesticide and fertilizer-free foods on a weekly basis.

For $35, consumers can have a bin of fresh produce, meat and breads delivered to one of eight depots around the region. The co-op asks that buyers sign on for a minimum of 10 weeks.

The bin program, which will run year-round, is the creation of a new group called Local Organic Food Team, or LOFT.

For small, organic farmers such as Linda Laepple, the LOFT co-op gives her an accessible market for her grass-fed beef and the grain and potatoes she grows near New Hamburg. She's one of 15 producers who will supply everything from snow peas to duck meat and pumpkin pie.

More and more consumers are interested in buying local foods, she said, but the inconvenience and gas costs associated with gathering it has kept them away.

"Now we can get better access to the people," she said. "And the people can get everything in one box, instead of driving out to five or six different farms."

Yesterday, supporters for the new co-op crammed into the Joseph Schneider Haus to celebrate its launch and sample some local edibles. The co-op will eventually need about 400 weekly buyers to be sustainable, said Martha Gay Scroggins, a grower and one of LOFT's creators.

There are about 120 members now, she said. But numbers are growing every week, in part thanks to word-of-mouth and a website, www.localorganic.ca/loft.

When people taste the difference between mass-produced produce and the stuff coming out of local fields, there's no need to do any advertising, Scroggins said.

"This has spread so much simply because the food tastes amazing," she said.

Category: Agriculture, Business