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Rural Coalition: Using the Internet to Preserve
Family Farms
Inspiration
In 1993, a group of small farmers in Alabama and Mississippi
loaded freshly harvested watermelons, peas, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers,
beans, squash, cantaloupe, corn, peppers, and peaches onto a
rented refrigeration truck, and headed north. The next day, they
reached Chicago, where a community-based organization called
No Dope helped them unload their goods at a farmers market. Soon,
residents of a nearby public housing project, many of whom undoubtedly
could trace their roots to southern farms, flooded into the market
to buy the inexpensive and unusually fresh fruit and vegetables.
The farmers, for their part, left two days later with substantially
higher profits than they could have earned delivering their produce
to wholesalers and food brokers closer to their farms
This story helped inspire an ambitious project by the Rural
Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based alliance of community-based
groups dedicated to helping small and minority farmers. While
it has become almost a cliché to say the Internet is producing
massive change in the economy and society, the Rural Coalition's
project seeks to use the Internet to achieve the exact opposite
goal to preserve a way of life that increasingly seems part of
our past. If small-scale farmers could regularly connect more
directly with consumers and with each other, the coalition argues,
they could meet a real market need and, at the same time, increase
their own income. In the process, they would learn more about
food markets, and they might have opportunities to exchange information
with each other on how to produce and market their goods more
efficiently.
With support from TOP, the Rural Coalition set out to put
this idea into action by creating a new kind of "SuperMarket."
Existing only in cyberspace, this market will carry or at least
describe in a comprehensive database the output of literally
thousands of family farms stretching from Maine to California
to Mexico. Buyers will be able to see at a glance what family
farmers have to offer. And the farmers will gain insights into
the workings of a marketplace that many find mysterious and less
than benevolent.
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A Diverse Constituency
The coalition that is building this new market represents
a diverse group. Among its members are the Federation of Southern
Cooperatives, which represents 25,000 low income rural families;
the Intertribal Agricultural Council, a non-profit corporation
whose member tribes control 79 percent of the land held in trust
for Native Americans; the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives,
which represents primarily African-American producer cooperatives;
Homeworkers Organized for More Employment (HOME), a cooperative
based in Maine that helps sell crafts and other goods often made
by people in their own homes; the Washington Association of Minority
Entrepreneurs, which helps Hispanics get into the agriculture
business; and the Hmong American Community, which assists members
of a Laotian ethnic group develop business and farming skills.
In recent decades, the small farmers represented by these
groups have seemed to be an endangered species. But with innovations
like the SuperMarket to bring them into the digital age, they
may just stage a comeback. At least they will have a better a
chance to become players in a lucrative and rapidly changing
food industry, where technology is playing a transformative role.
"The Internet can be viewed as the 21st century version
of rivers, which in the 18th century gave U.S. farmers access
to markets," says Robert Tse, a market analyst for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service. "Small
farmers should be able to jump the existing distribution channel
and reach socially responsible buyers in the retail or processor
area that purchase organic or sustainable farmed products."
As Tse's remarks suggest, the Rural Coalition believes the
SuperMarket will appeal to a new, but increasingly important,
kind of consumer. "Our market is the socially responsible
consumer," says Debra Livingtson, the Rural Coalition's
director of development. "Market data show that almost 70
percent of the people who shop in grocery stores would purchase
organic or sustainably produced goods if they had a choice."
Others have made similar observations. In a 1999 study by Cone
Roper, for instance, 84 percent of survey respondents said they
had a positive image of companies that supported a cause the
consumer cared about, and 65 percent said they would switch brands
to one associated with a good cause, assuming they would have
to make no sacrifice in price and quality.
But the Rural Coalition isn't pinning its hopes on altruism
alone. A growing number of Americans are buying natural foods
those that are minimally processed and free of artificial ingredients,
preservatives, and other non-naturally occurring chemicals for
health reasons. Sales of naturally produced goods grew from under
$2 billion in 1980 to $25 billion in 1998, according to a study
by the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks. Moreover, ACEnet
reports, the pace of sales growth is accelerating. In 1990, natural
product sales climbed 7 percent. As the decade progressed, those
sales climbed to more than 20 percent a year in 1994-1997, and
surged 79 percent in 1998. ACEnet has produced a guide called
Collaborative Cause Marketing Handbook for the Speciality Food
Industry to help small-scale producers figure out ways to tap
into this market.
The Rural Coalition, for its part, plans a big marketing effort
once its SuperMarket is fully operational. To appeal to socially
conscious buyers, Luis Sierra, marketing coordinator for the
Rural Development Center in Salinas, California, envisions a
SuperMarket website that not only will list products but also
will describe the farmers who grew them complete with pictures
and regional histories of the areas where the various products
were raised. In addition, the coalition will try to link to like-minded
organizations as well as to increasingly important natural foods
buyers. A possible partner is the Chefs Collaborative, an organization
that represents cooks who are always on the hunt for high-quality,
locally produced goods.
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Educating Farmers
Educating Farmers Educating the public to the value of goods
raised by small farms will be only part of the Rural Coalition's
effort. It also will have to spend a substantial amount of time
helping farmers understand their markets better than they currently
do. Many people won't buy unwashed greens, for instance, but
will pay more for greens that are packaged and ready to eat.
One of the main goals of the SuperMarket project is to teach
farmers about such consumer preferences. "This is going
to give farmers the information they need to decide what they
need to be growing," says Rebecca Bond, manager of the project.
"Instead of guessing, they are going to see how the market
is moving. It will show them what is being purchased and when,
what variety is being demanded, and what prices are. We think
this will show our non-organic farmers how they can get higher
prices by producing organic goods."
Nevertheless, the farmers and farm cooperatives represented
by the Rural Coalition will have to come a long way to start
using their digital tools. "They need everything from how
to use a mouse to understanding what the web is about, and why
it makes sense to invest time, money, energy and resources to
learn any of this stuff," says Richard Civille, executive
director of the Center for Civic Networking. The Rural Coalition
began by training members in computer and Internet basics.
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But the centerpiece of its project will
be the massive database showing what coalition members produce.
When fully developed, users will be able to use the SuperMarket
website to find out in advance what various farmers expect to
produce. When the goods are harvested, the database will show
exactly what is available and in what sizes and grades. The website
also will show the prices of the various products, as well as
various packaging options. |
The website recently launched a retail section so that farm
co-ops can use it to make direct sales (www.supermarketcoop.com).
The advantages of using the web are abundantly clear to those
who have tried it. HOME, the Maine cooperative, cut its costs
sharply by switching to web-based advertising rather than printing
and mailing catalogues and it realized a 30 percent gain in sales
of jams and jellies. Sales of Christmas wreaths also soared.
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Farmer-to-Farmer Networking
In general, though, the Rural Coalition doesn't believe the
success of the SuperMarket will depend on direct sales. While
the Internet may present good retail opportunities to some producers,
especially those who make non-perishable, packaged products that
can be shipped easily, many small farmers lack the tools needed
to get fresh foods to distant markets, and many wholesale buyers
still want to see their produce before buying it. The SuperMarket
can benefit small farmers in countless other ways, though. Among
other things, it can enable them to form partnerships that could
lead to efficiencies currently available only to large-scale
farming operations. Food buyers often buy seed for large farmers,
for instance, but small farmers don't get such help; by banding
together, small farmers in the Rural Coalition might gain enough
clout to win similar treatment. Similarly, small farmers might
be able to lock in sales with groups like the Chefs Collaborative
in advance. "It may be that specialty buyers will be able
to make arrangements with our farmers before the seeds go in
the ground," notes Bond.
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Joint marketing through the SuperMarket
also could enable farmers in different parts of the country to
increase the value of each other's goods. For instance, producers
in the southern U.S. and Mexico could jointly market tomatoes,
effectively extending their growing season; when tomatoes are
no longer available in the U.S., buyers still could obtain them
from Mexican producers an opportunity that would appeal to many
buyers looking for a steady supply. |
Rural Coalition members say they have only begun to explore
the possibilities for such collaboration. Father Randy Elridge,
director of the Maine cooperative HOME, says he has discussed
the idea of working cooperatively with a group of farm workers
in Maine. Originally, Father Elridge sought out the farm workers
as a possible market for jams, jellies, and crafts produced by
members of his cooperative. But the farm workers were equally
interested in using the SuperMarket to learn about job possibilities
up north. With the network, the farm workers could learn exactly
when goods are ready to produce, how much work there will be,
what the growers would pay, whether the growers seeking workers
are reliable, whether transportation to the job would be provided,
and what medical and educational facilities might be available
on the job. That could save them a lot of wasted travel to jobs
that don't work out.
| To Michael Drews, a consultant who developed
the SuperMarket database, such discussions are not surprising.
"There is no end to the type of cooperation you can have
when you all have the same database," says Drews. "This
project is going to have ramifications that are totally unforeseen.
People will devise uses we never thought of." |
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*This article is taken from the September
2000 report published by the Department of Commerce's Technology
Opportunities Program, which provides funding for the SuperMarket
Project. The entire report can be found online at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/top/publicationmedia/comm_conn/community_connections.html
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