Short Summary
We are a group of farmers located in Eastern Washington and the panhandle of Idaho. We started our farmers' cooperative, LINC Foods, in the hopes that we could expand the sales options available to local small farms in our area. After many years of working to build up the regional food system independently, we began to realize that working together was the only way we were going to be able to lower the barriers to one of the biggest untapped markets in the Spokane area.
The Spokane area is home to many large institutions such as universities, hospitals, and school districts. Collectively these institutions spend more on food purchases PER DAY than our area farmers' markets sell in an entire year. These institutions want to buy local food, but they don't know where to begin and lots of times they have serious barriers to doing so, such as large liability insurance policy requirements, food safety concerns, and the need to purchase larger quantities than many of individual farmers can supply.
Over the past six months, we have worked closely with 10 area school districts (Cheney, Spokane, East Valley, Wellpinit, Davenport, Newport, Othello, West Valley, Central Valley, and Mead), Eastern Washington University, Whitworth, and Gonzaga, to understand the needs of these institutional customers and how they can better work with local producers. All of these institutions are excited about working with LINC Farmers and getting more local food onto the plates of their students! We already have 20 farmers committed to being the founding members of the co-op and many more waiting in the wings once we prove our model.
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LINC Farmers will help our member-farmers access institutional markets by aggregating and distributing the products of our many farms to institutional customers. We will hold a group liability policy that will cover all member-farms of the co-op, which will allow us to sell to dining service companies such as Sodexo. At the same time, we will provide the one-stop shopping and quality assurance that institutions need to be able to buy local.
We are running our pilot project this summer to test our assumptions and refine our model. But we need start-up funds to help us purchase our re-useable produce bins, to purchase our liability insurance policy, develop our marketing materials and have enough working-capital that we can begin operations.
Your contribution will make a difference! Help us bring the regional food system in Spokane to a whole new level!
What We Need & What You Get
We need $10,000 to start the pilot of this project. We will use this money to purchase our product-liability insurance, some basic equipment we need to get going, and develop marketing materials. Finally, the money will be used to help us pay our farmers up-front for the product, since many of these institutions wait 30 or even 60 days before they pay most of their suppliers.
We have many unique perks that will let you taste the bounty of our regional product and get to know our farmers better. From sweet LINC Farmers swag to farm-tours, to catered local dinners, you're sure to find an amazing reward that fits into your budget.
If we don't reach our funding goal, your money will still be used to launch our pilot project, and we will be making sales to institutions this growing season. Every little bit helps, and the more you contribute, the more we can achieve this season!
The Impact
LINC Farmers are a diverse group. Some of us are multi-generational area farmers, some are just starting out. All of them are struggling to get by. By opening up new markets, we hope to increase the profitability of our farmers and thereby strengthen our entire local economy. Our farmers are incredible stewards of their land and though we are not all certified organic, we do all use sustainable farming practices.
We are also excited to get more local food into schools and into the bellies of kids who might not have a chance to eat healthy, fresh, local food at home. We think every kid deserves to eat the way our kids eat!
We've done a lot of research on different food hub and farmers' co-op models around the country and we truly believe we have taken the best of what's out their to create LINC Farmers. Supporting LINC Farmers will really make a difference in our community.
Risks & Challenges
There are a lot of unknowns for us right now. We have spent a lot of time planning and theorizing about how to move forward with the co-operative and have performed over a hundred interviews with customers and farmers to understand what the needs of both sides are. We have travelled all over the country from North Carolina to Montana to see what other food hubs and cooperatives are doing. We have learned a lot, but we still haven't actually done it ourselves. There is a lot we won't know until we actually hit the ground running and test some things out. From pricing to aggregation and distribution, we know that things won't run smoothly right out of the gate. We have been very transparent with both our customers and our farmers about this and that is why we are running this pilot project this summer, with a full-scale launch to follow in 2015.
Other Ways You Can Help
Please share this with your friends, family, and community. Get the word out to anyone who cares about good food and local economies. You can use the share tools right here on the Indiegogo page to spread the word on your social media. Thank you so much for your support!
