RAFI’s Agricultural Conservation and Market Access Manager Jaimie McGirt frequently works with the Eastern North Carolina Farmer Collaborative. She recently talked with Berry Hines, Sr., founder and coordinator of the collaborative, about the initiative’s beginnings, purpose, and unique attributes. Hines, a veteran, Native American, and grandson of a sharecropper, learned farming and beekeeping from his grandparents.
The Eastern NC Farmer Collaborative (ENC) — a nonprofit collective of 12 small-scale farmers — has established a model that’s successful for both its members and market end-buyers. The collaborative educates its members and other small-scale and/or beginning farmers on production strategies, assists with projects on each other’s farms, and aggregates and markets its products collectively — a multi-faceted strategy that helps keep “the small farmer” more sustainable.
Some ENC Collaborative members are small-scale commodity crop and small herd and flock producers, while others are beginning, diversified, and niche crop producers. One of the newest members runs a regenerative cattle grazing farm. A few are certified beekeepers and others are training to begin and manage honey-producing hives. Collaborative members learn from each other, sharing their experience and skills.
The collaborative’s efforts to build capacity for beginning farmers and help small-scale farmers diversify their production go hand in hand with its work to develop reliable markets for members’ products. Although the agricultural products from participating farmers retain individual farm logos, collaborative members benefit by purchasing packaging materials in bulk, sharing cold storage space, identifying potential markets, and transporting products from multiple farms to marketplaces in one vehicle.
Jamie McGirt (JM): When did the collaborative get started? And what did it look like?
Berry Hines (BH): We didn’t have a name for it in the beginning but it’s been about four years now. I found a lot of farmers growing produce that was going to waste with nowhere to sell it or, you know, they’d pull up to service stations and sell it on the roadside. I started gathering members’ products and marketing them together. We began with Feast Down East [an NC nonprofit and food hub devoted to supporting farm businesses, distributing local produce, and increasing consumer access to nutritious, seasonal food; see story in Living Roots 2], Communities in Partnership [which hosts the East Durham Farmers’ Market], and then at the farmers market in Raleigh and other small markets. At the beginning it was just conventional crops like collards, potatoes, and tomatoes.
JM: What does the Eastern NC Collaborative do now?
BH: We spread the footprint of farm products without all of us being on the road. Not all of us know how to advertise, not all have the budgets for that. Marketing together, the farmers’ sales started to increase.
My big question for farmers is always, ‘What are your major hindrances?’ and the answer is always ‘Transportation and packaging.’ They need to be farming, not standing at the market all day.
Also, cold space is at a premium. Take collards. Having a cold space for them gives me 14 days to sell with them being fresh.
JM: Why is aggregation important for the small farmer?
BH: The collaborative is for farmers who don’t want to compete with each other. Several of us grow collards, for example, but we’re all able to sell the collards to Feast Down East because we offer them at around the same price.
Some members sell in local community markets or roadside stands. But they don’t have the foot traffic. The majority of the produce comes through the collaborative. Eight farms collectively sold $47,000 of produce with Feast Down East alone! How much goes to each farmer is based on their input.
Some of the farmers have other outlets or sell at their own markets, but the excess that’s high quality goes through the collaborative. With the food hubs, if it’s not a quality item, they’ll stop ordering from you. So [the members] are selling at their own markets — but they figure out what markets are best for their income. Sometimes someone will say to us, “I can pay you more than what Feast Down East does,” but we get so many intangible benefits from marketing with them.
JM: Why do you focus on working with underserved farmers?
BH: I’m one myself: Native and veteran. I’ll work with anyone east of I-95 where ‘the majority is the minority.’ One thing farmers know about me is that I’m about the small farmer. They need more attention. When one farmer started with me, he didn’t know what his USDA farm number was or have a logo. A lot of farmers don’t participate in federal programs or extension programs. My being one of them and showing them what we’ve done with the resources warms them to programs like USDA and Extension. We can’t make somebody do something. But we go with them [to agency offices] in a non-adversarial role and find solutions. I like to get with the farmer and figure out what makes sense.
JM: Any advice to our readers about aggregation?
BH: If you were to set up a collaborative in your area, these are the most important things: transportation, packaging. Don’t go into it with a competitive mindset. Farmers should grow what they’re good at. Be very aware of your surroundings and notice how foods are being used and begin to ask questions. Adapt. When I was in Wendell, where I sell food boxes, some of my numbers were going down. Walking around, I noticed how pet friendly it was. I added a soup bone to the food boxes and my box count went up and up!
JM: Can you tell me about the connection between reaching new markets and producers needing to increase capacity to grow?
BH: If I can’t market, I can’t produce. We have to grow niche crops that are in high demand.
This doesn’t mean you stop growing conventional ones — grow what you grow best. But look around your town. If you live near a university, there’s a very diverse group there and they want home cooking and bok choy and chorizo sausage. We talk about these things together and decide what to grow.
Squash for example — we don’t need to flood the market with it. But we do need to have it when the big farmers don’t.
Jaimie McGirt, RAFI’s Agricultural Conservation and Market Access Manager, has a decade of experience bolstering rural food economies in economically distressed and ecologically sensitive regions. For RAFI she helps farmers identify business and stewardship priorities, create action plans, and find resources.