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John and Ida Thurman, who
raise vegetables, chickens and hogs in central Illinois, cooperate
with 20 other families to jointly process and sell their products
in Chicago.
– Photo courtesy of John Thurman |
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On Main Street, the ethnic
produce – purple-hulled peas, speckled lima beans, okra, watermelons
and collard greens – piles up in colorful displays for residents
of rural Pembroke Township, Ill., who select their favorites on weekdays
during the growing season. The buyers directly support their farming neighbors,
who have been growing vegetables for generations but only recently began
co-selling them at markets.
Once a week, the members
of the Pembroke Farmers Cooperative take their show on the road. They
pack up their refrigerated truck and bring their bounty to the Austin
farmers market in Chicago, 70 miles away.
The young cooperative, started
in 1999, has grown from a few members to more than 20, all eager to maximize
the market potential for their chemical-free vegetables. Many of them
also raise chickens using range methods that justify their “natural”
labeling claims. Range chicken production, in fact, has increased partly
thanks to two SARE farmer grants, which helped Pembroke producers perfect
free-range and pen methods for raising poultry.
The co-op also has benefited
from a USDA rural development grant, which helped set up the co-op with
staff and a computer. The group leveraged a state grant to purchase a
refrigerated truck, which hauls chickens to the processor and returns
with fresh meat to sell to about six restaurants and a few health food
stores in Chicago.
With help from the Kankakee
County USDA-Farm Service Agency director, they located a small-scale processor
to slaughter and package their birds, and created a simple co-op label.
With processing secured, the families are able to sell their product within
the county or, for an even better premium, in Chicago.
“It’s a system
that really fits their lifestyles and the community,” said Merrill
Marxman, the FSA director who helped establish the co-op. “They have
small acreages and limited financial resources. We started it as an outreach
effort to what we saw as an impoverished community, and now the co-op
has a headquarters.”
The Pembroke farmers grew
up raising garden vegetables, most with a few animals on the side. In
the mid-1990s, more and more of them were taking advantage of the sales
opportunities in Chicago, staffing booths at farmers markets and gaining
store and restaurant customers with promises of locally raised, chemical-free
produce. When they started to notice their neighbors driving the same
direction each weekend, a few began to piggyback sales on one another’s
transactions.
“On weekends, you would
see 10 or 12 pickup trucks leaving the community,” said Basu, the
president of the Pembroke Growers Cooperative who uses only one name.
“Many of them had old, raggedy trucks that were always breaking down.
We starting helping one another and buying things together.”
With little money –
even buying seeds at the beginning of the season was challenging –
farmers in Pembroke saw the advantage of pooling their limited resources.
When two of them received SARE grants to study raising chickens outdoors,
they shared their new practical experiences with others in the community.
“We’ve been raising
chickens as a family for 40 years,” said John Thurman, a Pembroke
farmer who received a SARE grant to evaluate methods to raise chickens.
“Not only was our project a success, but we have been able to continue
poultry production and teach community members about raising pastured
poultry,” he said.
The interest from potential
customers in buying pasture-raised chicken encouraged the group to jointly
purchase the truck, enabling them to produce in bulk. Co-op members hope
to build a local processing plant to save the 150-mile round trip to the
processor.
The meat sells for $2.40
a pound, and the group’s customers seem happy with the co-op’s
product. If they have any complaint, it’s that they do not have enough
for them to feature every week.
“Our volume goes in
spurts,” explained Basu. On a given month, the co-op may slaughter
1,000 birds, then process another thousand in just two weeks. Basu, however,
is sure the group could sell 10,000 birds a week.
“We have a good product
and an arrangement with our customers,” Basu said. “When we
do have chicken, the chefs highlight fresh, free-range poultry on their
menus.”
The glue that keeps the
group together, and what seems to be a key to their success, is the lack
of agri-chemicals in their production. “Most of us have been organic
farmers for years before the word became popular,” said Basu. “We’re
a limited resource community, and we didn’t have the money to pay
for chemicals.”
Instead, the farmers employ
hot pepper sprays and garlic mixes to deter pests.
The co-op is trying to expand
both production and its customer base. “By getting together, we can
meet more [production] numbers,” Thurman said. “It’s working
out pretty well.”
Basu remains confident that
the small group will survive, especially because they surmounted one of
the biggest obstacles: encouraging independent farmers to work together.
“The hardest thing you can do is organize farmers because they’re
very independent, especially family farmers,” Basu said. “We’re
still young and developing our marketing and our product –
a ‘Pembroke bird.’ We want to get that message out there
– that we have a good clean bird, produced off the land.”
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Audience
Small-scale farmers in central Illinois |
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Educating Team
USDA and state agencies |
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Challenges Addressed
Little access to capital or equipment
Small land holdings |
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Connection Strategies
Federal grant funding
Locating resources (i.e. refrigerated truck) |
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Teaching Methods
Field days |
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