Local food cooperative Southwest Farm Fresh saw a 70% boost in sales during the economic tumult of 2020 in part because of its new online farmers market.
The Cortez-based co-op connects customers in Southwest Colorado with food grown by small farms and offers local farmers a place to sell their products. In 2020, sales jumped with the help of the online market and a federal grant. By July 2020, the co-op reached a new milestone: $1 million in all-time sales.
“(The grant) has helped us in a lot of different ways over the last three years,” said Ole Bye, operations manager for the co-op.
Southwest Farm Fresh, formed in 2014, is the only multi-farm, farmer-owned distribution system in Western Colorado, Bye said.
It regularly works with 20 to 25 food producers in Montezuma, La Plata, Dolores and other Southwest Colorado counties. The biggest producer is Adobe House Farm, which operates about 7 cultivated acres near Durango.
The co-op started distributing organic, high-quality foods in wholesale bulk orders to places like restaurants.
“Providing a consistent supply to enough restaurants, as many as were needed to keep the doors open, was really challenging,” Bye said.
In 2018, the co-op received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that doled out $229,000 over three years.
The grant helped the co-op form a community supported agriculture program. It paid for marketing outreach, supplies, equipment and storage space for food orders.
The co-op also used the grant to create an online farmers market where customers can place orders for pickup in Cortez, Mancos, Durango, Bayfield, Dolores and Rico.
The online format was a hit in 2020, the co-op said. Many people were turning to online purchasing and local goods during public health-related closures and lockdowns.
More producers got involved, and more than 100 customers buy from the market weekly. By 2021, the co-op had $1.3 million in all-time sales.
Now all orders run through the online farmers market, Bye said.
“It’s been hugely helpful for us. We previously relied on wholesale orders to restaurants as our primary market, and the grant really allowed us to shift our focus to direct sales,” Bye said. “It definitely made a difference for our bottom line, and it was a better fit for our farmers, who are small and always dealing with a short growing season.”
Most farmers in Southwest Colorado are once again dealing with extreme or exceptional drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The Jackson Gulch Reservoir, about 5 miles north of Mancos, was about 39% full Friday. In northeast La Plata County, Lemon Reservoir was about 32% full on Friday; Vallecito Reservoir, 59% full, according to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation records.
“The drought situation is really critical, and it’s affecting a number of our farms,” Bye said. “There’s just a kind of general regionwide gloom in the agricultural community. But farmers are also optimistic.”
The Southwest Farm Fresh producers might not have any late-season crops, which means the co-op will have to rely on non-local producers for some items, he said.
The co-op already pulls some items from Del Norte, the Front Range or even out-of-state producers. However, all produce and meat currently comes from Montezuma County and La Plata County farmers and ranchers, Bye said.
The co-op’s goal is to keep the market running so it can always be there as an opportunity for local producers. With the completion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, the co-op is officially grant-free and ready to move onward without grant assistance.
“It’s a little scary, but it’s liberating too,” Bye said. “It means we don’t have a choice but to survive on our own, and I think that’s good motivation.”
smullane@durangoherald.com
