Negative publicity helps out American direct marketers

Reported government raids have meant more customers for farms, as they showed consumers how to get fresh produce from the farm

By Ian Cumming, Ontario Farmer, February 12, 2008

Geneva, New York - Direct marketing to the consumer is a rapidly growing, profitable enterprise that faces possible legal challenges, said several speakers from New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio at the Family Farming Conference in Geneva, New York last week.

The majority of farmers present, and speakers, were from the Amish and Mennonite communities, with many attaching a moral, religious significance to how they were growing and producing their products through the united work of their families, and the superior quality of products they were offering to the consumer.

Mike and Gayle Thorpe from East Aurora, New York - which is near Buffalo - were conventional cash crop farmers who had started from scratch in the late 1970s, and then had the high interest rates hit in the early 1980s. They looked at diversification for additional income and started with three acres of strawberries.

Starting small is something that they still recommend as a first step for those looking to diversify. "Everybody likes strawberries," said Mike Thorpe. With prices ranging from $2.51 a quart for picking your own and $4 on the roadside stand, combined with good yields up to 10,000 quarts an acre, "it's a pretty nice profit," he said. "You don't need a lot of acres."

Today the Thorpe family, with five of their six children involved with the operation, farm 1,800 acres. They grow organic cash crops - corn $580 a ton and beans $800 a ton that day - along with 54 different types of vegetables, plus marketing organic beef, pork, chickens, eggs and raw milk from their Jersey cows.

Noting that there are one million people within 30 miles of their farm, they quit retailing to stores and began "customer supported agriculture" (CSA). "We thought if we had different items they would come to us," said Thorpe.

Ranging from $425 to $525 a family - depending on their size - people will pay that amount by April 20, which allows them vegetables whenever they are in season for what they can use in one week for their family. Fruit shares sell for $250. The first year they had 62 CSA families, today they have 350.

Having that money pre-paid helps with the spring expenses, noted Mike. "We don't need an operating loan anymore," he said.

The CSA customers pick their items up late Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and while they initially thought it would hurt their road side stand business, "it helped it," said Mike. That is also when people bought their meat, milk, jams and items from the bakery they built, which uses their organic grains. Pies are also sold - the lard from their pigs and the fruit from their farm are the ingredients.

The Thorpes also home-schooled their children and while it added to their at-home responsibilities, they credit having the children involved on farm at a young age, as part of the reason for their continued interest when adults.

"You are not interested in something unless you are involved," said Thorpe.
The raw milk part of the operation began as a combination of health problems with their daughter, who medically needed raw milk, and a strong demand for it from their customers, said Gayle. Being lactose intolerant herself, raw milk also helped her health, she said.

They sought out the health authorities wanting to legally operate and were told their cow share program - where the customers own the cows - was legal. However recently they have come back and said, "the law has not changed, but our interpretation of it has," said Gayle. They are still retailing their raw milk, despite being advised not to, she said.

Leroy Miller from Lancaster, Pennsylvania has developed an on farm store which specializes in pastured meats, plus raw milk and on farm manufactured dairy products. With his father giving him control at the age of 21, Miller was looking to expand the operation, "without putting my grandchildren into debt."

Beginning CSA organic marketing in 2000, Miller sent the Holsteins away and brought in Jerseys. Butter, yogurt, ice cream and cottage cheese manufacturing began on farm, combined with 2,500 broilers, 650 laying hens, turkeys and vegetables. Pigs get the skim milk.

"Everything is butchered, manufactured and marketed on the farm," said Miller.
A number of others have began CSA marketing in their Amish community and "we have set up a club of 30 farmers with contracts and membership agreements," said Miller.

State inspectors have begun to hassle them, mainly due to the legal grey area of selling raw milk and its products, and the group has set up a legal defense fund last summer, said Miller. There was a large meeting in their state capital with officials last September and with 400 farmers in the room, "things got unruly," he said. However since then, "they are not challenging us," said Miller.

The group marketing CSA has also hired its own inspectors and developed its own on-farm quality standards, said Miller. Retail points for the CSA customers, where the farmers drop off their products, have also been set up.

However government inspectors did start moving in about once a month, took samples and then issued press releases that cheese seized had campylobacter, or their raw milk was dangerous with listeria, he said.

But the group also takes their own samples and accredited labs showed their products as being totally safe, said Miller.

They rebutted with these lab results every time in the press and each time there was a food scare story the CSA customer base dramatically expanded, said Miller.

After the eighth time in nine months, when the customer base expanded again, Miller wrote the government officials and asked if they could raid them every week, being it was so good for business.

He hasn't seen them since. Miller also advised for no one to ever sign a government document, when asked to by inspectors. He didn't whenever an inspector came onto his farm and threatened the future of his operation unless he signed one, said Miller.

However, defying government inspectors doesn't sit easily with Miller's and his fellow Amish farmers deep, religious faith. But a united stand needed to be taken against the erosion of small family farms in their community, who were deemed unprofitable, and the poor quality food being sold to consumers in supermarkets, he said.

Helping both farmers and consumers alike, "was my goal when I took that stand against the inspector," he said.

OACC gratefully acknowledges Ontario Farmer for permission to post this article on our website.

Posted March 2008