The Good Food Box: Assessing the economic impacts of non-profit food distribution

By Kathryn Scharf, FoodShare Toronto

Written for the newsletter of the United States Community Food Security Coalition

In Toronto each month, FoodShare's Good Food Box (GFB) program distributes 4,000 boxes of fresh produce through 180 volunteer-run neighbourhood drop-offs. This amounts to $700,000 in purchases of fresh fruit and vegetables, about 60% of which is local. While large-scale compared to many community food security projects, the GFB is undoubtedly small in the scheme of the bigger food system. Just what kind of an impact does a project like this have on local farmers and the local agricultural economy?

Essentially, a large, non-profit buying club, the GFB project has several goals: improving low income people's access to affordable food, promoting healthy eating, supporting local farmers, encouraging sustainable agriculture and promoting community development. Depending on the state of development of the project at any given moment, these goals are being met in varying degrees, given that they are sometimes in conflict with each other (sustainability vs. affordability; efficiency/scale of impact vs. on-the-ground community participation; popular tastes vs. seasonal availability, etc. etc.).

When we began, the idea was that we would buy directly from local farmers. When we were buying for 43 boxes in 1993, that notion turned out to be vastly unrealistic. Farmers think in terms of fields worth of food. We were talking cases. Very few farmers operate the mixed farms any more that would be required to supply 15-20 items required for a box each month. Would we contact and purchase from that many farmers each month? And just how would this food be delivered? Most farmers in our area are two hours or more from the city, making it highly unlikely that they would drive downtown to drop off a few cases of produce. Especially since we didn't plan to pay any more than the regular market. Nor had we the labour or trucks to drive around the countryside picking up the food ourselves.

So this is how the purchasing for our conventionally-grown version of the GFB box (accounting for 3500 of our 4000) developed: We would send a staff person to buy our produce at the Ontario Food Terminal, the huge marketplace where every other wholesaler, large retailer, restaurant and supermarket buys their food. We bought local and seasonal whenever possible. After a couple of years, we hired a professional buyer, who charged a premium for getting our order together, but got good deals for us. We tried to imbue him with the spirit of our objectives. This worked sometimes, but he did have difficulty understanding why any other consideration but price and quality need come into the picture (frankly, he wasn't far out of line with the priorities of most of our customers). After a time, the freshness and quality of the box, responsive customer service and low prices helped us to grow: from 43 boxes in 1994 to our current levels.

In the last couple of years, the scale of the project has finally allowed us to move to direct purchases from farmers.We now have relationships with farmers who grow our apples, potatoes and a few other crops. In these new relationships, as in the relationships we have built with the organic farmers who grow for our 500 Organic Food Boxes, it is possible to see the economic impact of the GFB in a way that is not possible when you are throwing your $700,000 into the mainstream food system. Several local Old Order Mennonite farmers have been selling us organic food for a few years now. One family, whose religious scruples about the use of technology forced them to give up dairy farming, used our business to replace this lost revenue. We figure that we buy about $30,000 to $40,000 per year from them (accounting for probably half their total farm income). This is so for several of our small organic growers.

We believe that we are helpful for farmers who are "in transition" in a variety of senses. In transition to the wider marketplace, for example. We hope that our growers won't necessarily stay with us, but will move on to other markets. Sometimes we are able to help bridge the cultural and geographical divide between country and city, by cluing farmers in to downtown consumer preferences. For example, we worked with another grower, encouraging him to grow radicchio and leeks (and to trim, store and package them appropriately). Now this farm sells to stores across the city.

Two-way flexibility is what makes our relationships with farmers productive. They may not always have what we want, in the amounts that we want. But on the other hand, as a niche buyer, we may take things off their hands that large buyers don't want. We'll buy a lot of squash in the fall, when that's all that's left over. We'll buy those unusual varieties of apple, of which there aren't large enough quantities to sell to the supermarkets. And we like our brussel sprouts on the stalk.

The GFB is also a perfect market for crops in transition from conventional to organic. No one will pay a premium for this product, so farmers are happy enough to sell it to us at conventional prices. This is a bonus for our conventional GFB customers, who can get food with fewer pesticide and chemical residues at a low price. At the same time, we are happy to be able to support and encourage farmers to make the change to organic production, and we're hoping to build more relationships with transitional farmers in the near future.

Our newsletter and events, such as farm visits and co-ordinators educationals, constantly promote the benefits of local, seasonal and sustainably-produced food. We thus hope that we are creating a ripple effect, by creating cadres of shoppers who are aware of food issues, and who will carry over their commitment to local, healthy, whole foods to the shopping they do alongside and after their GFB purchase. Other ripples: there are now at least 20 or 30 programs across Canada modelled on the GFB.

It may be obvious to state that when assessing the impact of a program like the GFB, size does matter. The bigger you are, the more likely you are to be able to register as a real economic alternative in the food system for farmers and consumers. But there are "training opportunities" for both sides of the equation that are not necessarily reliant on being large-scale. And there is definitely a constant balancing act that must go on with quality: the quality of the relationships with consumers and farmers, between consumers and farmers and the quality of the food being sold. Impacts at this "quality level" are difficult to measure in economic terms.