Franciscan Family Farms

A friend of mine was speaking with a local doctor today (at an appointment) about healthy food choices.  The doctor was raving about grass-fed beef and the benefits, but was complaining about not being able to find any in our area.  My friend pointed him in the direction of a local farming family that will have one bull to butcher later this year.  Then the doctor asked if there was anyone selling chickens locally, and my friend was able to make that connection as well.  The doctor was blown away that he now had a source of local grass-fed beef, chicken, and even milk!

So how many people are there in Southeast Missouri and around the country that aren’t at all aware about the local products available in their area?  And how does the typical consumer go from thinking, “I’d sure like to try some local food” to becoming a regular customer?  On the whole, the local food movement seems to have a problem of awareness.  I can think of a couple of ways that consumers can connect with their local food movement, but I’d like to hear more:

• Local Farmers’ Markets - This is probably the first thing that crosses the minds of consumers when they start thinking about local food.  But not every farmer participates in these, and at least in our area, many consumers can’t participate either (the largest local farmers’ market is during business hours on a weekday).
• Small Grocers and Organic Food Stores - Local food seekers might also turn to their local food stores in their search.  Again, I would venture to say that a small percentage of family farms are selling through these channels.  And the stores don’t exactly have an incentive to help consumers make connections to local farmers that don’t sell there.
• Internet sites – There are a couple of types of sites… one is the individual farm site, much like our own.  Obviously, we hope to be high on the Google search list for terms like “local food Southeast Missouri”, etc.  But this is hit-or-miss, and even if they find one source of local food, they aren’t necessarily going to find out about the others.  Then there are sites like EatWild, which list multiple farms for a given area.  Again, the issue is getting these potential local food consumers to these web sites in the first place.  But I think there is a lot of promise there.

So what are some of the other ways that people go about finding local food?  And how can we small farmers do our part to raise awareness not only of our farms, but of all available local foods?