Local Foods Mohawk Valley (LFMV), located in Clinton, New York, wants to forge a future for online farmers’ markets in a post pandemic world. The organization is motivated to increase access to local food and during LFMV’s first year of operation has also boosted farmers’ lifestyles, community relations, and the local economy.
LFMV launched in spring of 2022. Their online store is open from Wednesday morning through Sunday evening, allowing consumers to shop across categories or farms. Once the order window closes on Sunday evening, farmers have until Tuesday afternoon to harvest and collect order requests on their farms before dropping off their product at a local church in Clinton. Shoppers can pick up their order Tuesday evening in an hour and a half long curbside delivery window.
Online farmers’ markets grew in popularity nationwide at the height of COVID-19 as consumers craved localism at socially safe distances, according to eMarketer. Jack Riffle, founder of LFMV, says their success in establishing year-round community access to local food has propelled the online market into a flourishing existence in the wake of the pandemic.
Riffle wanted to create the online market with both farmers and community members in mind. There is an in-person market in Clinton’s village center, but it operates seasonally and is only open between 10:00AM- and 4:00PM on Thursdays.
“If you’re someone who works a regular 9 to 5 you just can’t go to the farmers market and are essentially excluded from access to local food,” Riffle tells Food Tank. By offering an online marketplace in addition to the in-person one, Riffle hopes LFMV can meet the needs of working families and families with children.
The winter can also be challenging for farmers. “Sometimes winter sales can be quite lean because you don’t have these regular outlets for food distribution,” Riffle tells Food Tank, “so an online farmers market can bridge that gap and allow farmers to continue having income and customers to continue having access to local food.”
Riffle has also found that having an online option for farmers’ markets has helped increase productivity on the farm. Through working with farmers, he has found that the time spent by farmers selling their goods at markets directly detracts from their efficiency on the farm. He believes the addition of an online platform is an easy win for farmers, opening valuable time in their day while also reducing food waste.
“You are only harvesting or packaging what you’re selling, you’re only dropping off, not standing and waiting to see if a customer comes or doesn’t come,” says Riffle. “The idea of a guaranteed sale reduces some of the stress from a farmer’s perspective.”
Suzie Jones from Jones Family Farm was one of LFMV’s first vendors. Jones Family Farm has been a vendor at Clinton’s in person market for over ten years. They began selling online for the first time when the pandemic hit, joining together with other local farms in a “Farmer’s Park-It,” a model that provided a short 30-minute weekly pickup window in a shopping plaza parking lot.
While the “Farmer’s Park-It” helped Jones Family Farm stay afloat during the peak of the pandemic, Jones recalls challenges in maintaining and marketing an independent online store. LFMV has since alleviated some of these responsibilities.
“I am spending considerably less time putting together the weekly orders than I did for the ‘Farmer’s Park-It,’” Jones tells Food Tank. “I can concentrate on telling our story and sharing recipes rather than pushing people to place an order.”
While access and efficiency are at the heart of LFMV’s mission, Riffle has found that the drop off and pick up windows at the church have become a meeting space for Clinton community members. According to Riffle, this congregation has helped foster relationships among community members, including students at the local college, Hamilton.
Riffle hopes to continue building community relationships and supporting Clinton residents’ access to healthy and local food.
“We’ve kept over US$50,000 in the local economy,” says Riffle. “That money has gone straight to the farmers. Without LFMV, where would that money go?”
This article was written Liza Greene.
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Photo courtesy of Shelley Pauls, Unsplash
