About Farmers’ Fresh Food Network

Farmers’ Fresh Food Network is a cooperative of small farmers in West Georgia and East Alabama.  We started in 2004 when several of us got together to look for better ways to market our produce.  Now we have 22 farmer members from southeast Alabama to northwest Georgia.  Each of our member farms committs to follow our growing practices that include restrictions on the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers.  We believe in working with nature to find the best ways to grow food.  By promoting healthy habitats we can limit the use of poisons and grow healthier produce.

Our farms are small by modern standards.  Vegetable and fruit farms are anywhere from one half acre to twenty acres.  Cattle farms are a few hundred acres.  They have to be small because we use mostly family labor.  Several of us also host interns and others seeking to learn about how to grow sustainably.  On these small farms we can grow an amazing amount of produce.  By rotating crops and building up the health of our soils many of us produce 2-5 times as much per acre as a typical commercial farm.

How we work together

Twice a year we get together to talk about what we learned the past year and to plan what we will grow in the future.  We share information about best growing practices and we plan our crop planting and harvesting.  This planning is very important because we want to provide our customers with a good mix of produce every month we are selling.  Because of the geographical range of our farmers we are able to provide a wide range of produce throughout most of the year.

Each week during the CSA season the farmers notify our coordinator what produce they will have available the following week.  The coordinator uses this information to decide what goes in the CSA bags.  And this year she will also send out an email to customers who what to purchase through the online store.  On Monday morning the coordinator sends out the orders to the farmers for what they need to bring in that Tuesday.  Between 11am and 2pm Tuesday the farmers bring their produce to our packing shed.  Each farmer bags their produce in the units ready to go in the customer bags.  From 2 to 4 pm, a varied group of farmers, subscribers and volunteers pack the bags.  Some are delivered that afternoon.  Others go into a walk-in cooler for delivery the next day.

Farmers’ Fresh pays the members a set price for the produce they bring in.  We add about 30% to cover the costs of the operating the co-op and this becomes the price we charge customers.  We are constantly tweaking the system to make it more efficient and return more money to the member farmers.  If we have a profit at the end of the year we return some of this to the member farmers based on the amount they sold to the co-op.

Like all cooperatives Farmers’ Fresh is governed by a Board of Directors who are elected by the member farmers.