Before industrialized shipping and food production, there was a time when people had to eat food that was grown nearby.
Now, eating locally seems like a luxury to many.
The Southwest Washington Growers Cooperative and Food Hub represents a return to eating local.
Just a few weeks into summer, the Southwest Washington Food Hub harvest box program is in full swing distributing boxes packed with a customizable selection of fresh and locally grown produce to more than 250 customers each week. Those boxes are assembled right here in Lewis County inside the cooperative's small warehouse and office space at the Port of Chehalis Business and Industrial Park south of Chehalis.
This summer marks the third year the boxes are available to residents of Lewis, Thurston, Mason, Pierce and Grays Harbor counties. In that time, the program has grown from a box of food from a few farms going to just a couple local workplaces to a network of 38 farms across the region selling their produce to more than 250 customers, including residents and workplaces from Lacey to Toledo.
According to Food Hub Manager Tina Sharp, the harvest boxes help connect local community members and workplaces with fresh food grown right in their backyard.
“Part of it is community connection … letting the community know what we have here,” Sharp said. “I’ve lived in Thurston County since 1976, and I had no idea we had this much food here. There’s no reason anybody should go hungry … There's a lot of people in the community that don’t know that, and I think the more awareness we can bring to local food, the better.”
The harvest box program runs from June to September this summer. It is an easy way for individuals in the community to access local produce. Those who sign up through the Southwest Washington Food Hub’s website are able to buy just one box or register for the rest of the season, paying a prorated sum for the remainder of the summer.
The box customers receive is similar to a community supported agriculture (CSA) program where locals can buy a box of fresh produce from a local farm, but on a larger scale and with many more options. The advantage of receiving produce from so many local farms is that customers can choose from a variety of fresh produce. That's very unlike most CSAs where you simply get what is available. In recent weeks, available produce has ranged from fresh garlic and green onions to bok choy and beets and much more.
With the harvest boxes, the Food Hub creates a direct line from the farmers to local communities and workplaces. Sharp said the goal is to take care of the marketing and sales for the growers so they can focus on what they do best and hopefully benefit local businesses, as well.
“Since the hub has started, one of our main goals for the co-op is to be that middle man for our producer so they can focus on the farming,” Sharp said. “We want our producers to be able to produce. We want our businesses to be able to continue to do business, so why not put the two together and increase foot traffic at the local businesses with our local food?”
Workplaces and individuals can sign up for the program, with locals able to pick up a box from a community drop spot at nearby locations such Grist Stone Milling in Centralia or the Colvin Ranch Storefront at the Tenino Agricultural Park, among many other locations in Lewis County and South Thurston County.
Workplace drops give employees access to fresh produce. Some of the earliest workplaces to get involved include the city of Lacey and the Washington state Legislature. Newer programs and dropoffs include sending boxes to the Panorama Senior Living Retirement Community in Lacey, the Toledo Food Bank and to Valley View Medical Center to be given to patients as part of a program called Food as Medicine.
According to the Food Hub’s Sales Specialist Annie Salafsky, the Food Hub is also beneficial for the growers in the Southwest Washington growers cooperative because the growers ultimately decide the prices they sell at while the Food Hub works on selling products both through the harvest box program and wholesale.
“Unlike a wholesaler, you know where they’re forcing really low prices on their growers, we give growers more latitude, and then so much of our revenue is actually just going back to our growers,” Salafsky said. “We have a low overhead, and then our grower payments are a large part of our expenditures, so that makes a really big difference. It’s kind of a hybrid for growers between a purely wholesale model and a retail model.”
The Food Hub is overseen by both a steering committee and board of directors led by farmers and members who make sure the project is beneficial to all who are involved.
The program also benefits from help from the Evergreen State College farm program that has offered to bring students to help out with the program in order to get its students involved in farming and pass on knowledge of farming to the next generation.
According to Evergreen State College Professor Sarah Williams, workers and owners of many farms in Southwest Washington, including many involved in the co-op, have connections to Evergreen State College. The university's farm stand also functions as a drop spot for community members near the university's campus to pick up their boxes.
While the harvest box is in only its third year operating, Sharp and Salafsky say the origins of the harvest box program stem from the COVID-19 pandemic when many farms struggled to find labor. According to Salafsky, who has worked in local agriculture for more than 30 years the labor shortage led to many farms struggling to continue marketing and distributing locally. Many shut down CSA programs that get produce to locals.
The cooperative offers a bit of protection for some of those farms, and now, as the harvest box becomes more popular, the Food Hub hopes to expand its services and begin offering more product sharing programs and to offer products year-round. Sharp says a big one the hub is considering is starting a meat share program.
“One of our goals is to go year-round,” Sharp said. “So, the season will end in September and pick up again in October for the fall winter season. But, again, we’re trying to pivot and create different shares for different seasons. You know, we could do meat all year long because we could get frozen stuff that's not contingent on what the weather is doing really.”
Learn more about the Food Hub and how to get signed up at https://swwafoodhub.com/.
