Where did you collect your most recent grocery haul? Try to remember the items you hastily organized on the conveyor belt at check-out. Now, where did all those come from?
1,500 is an important, if rarely recognized, number; it’s the average number of miles that produce travels on its way from an industrial farm to your dining room table. That is, unless you tend to shop for your produce locally.
Argus Farm Stop (or, “Argus,” if you’re familiar) is a business amalgam that can best be described as half “indoor farmers market” and half “hipster coffee shop/bakery.” The store features a cornucopia of produce, meat, and dairy grown by over 200 local farmers, 90% of whom are located within a 10 miles radius.
This week, we talked to the brains behind this community operation: Kathy Sample and Bill Brinkerhoff. The couple started Argus in 2014 with the goal of improving access to local produce and growing the local food economy. Now, just four years later, they’ve doubled their business and have two locations right here in Ann Arbor.
Argus is a local low-profit, low-liability company or “L3C,” a kind of business entity that facilitates investment in socially-useful enterprises. Farmers deliver their products weekly, and Kathy and Bill have designed their business model to allow farmers to set their own prices. Argus then sends 75% of the proceeds right back to them (for scale, farmers involved in industrial-scale agriculture earn back an average of just $0.15 on the dollar). After unloading their goods crate by crate, farmers tend to hang out for a bit at the stop, often grabbing a cup o’ joe before hitting the road. Because of this practice, shoppers have the unique opportunity to interact with their farmers, making Argus the juncture where food-eaters and food-growers build relationships. This is exactly what Kathy and Bill envisioned for their small business.
We wanted to know more about those 200 caffeinated and amiable food-growers, so we invited one into our studio. His name is Shannon Brines and, among the many hats he wears, (e.g. University of Michigan SEAS lecturer, spatial analysis research supporter, vice chair of the Washtenaw County Food Policy Council, I could go on…) he’s the head honcho over at Brines Farm—that’s his straw hat. Shannon grows perennials (i.e. fruits and veggies that are planted once and harvested year after year) like peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, and hearty greens using hoop houses (a low-cost and versatile alternative to a green house). And, with the recent addition of 80 acres to his farm, he’s also started to dabble in annual vegetables like squash, one of which weighed in at 60 pounds this past harvest. Good gourd!
When asked about his philosophy on food, Shannon replied “I would choose food with an authentic story,” demonstrating his support for community-based agriculture. His website even features the slogan, “Local, year-round produce. Know your farmer!” as well as a charming cartoon rendition of his face. You can check it out here along with the website for Argus.
Logan, Bella, Meg, and Ed had a conversation with these three local food gurus and covered topics like food access, sustainable agriculture, residual pesticides, state and federal farm policy, and more. Click up above to give it a listen, and click down below for links related to the discussion.
As always, keep it hot, keep it here.
The Washtenaw Food Policy Council
Stats and Demographics on Hunger
The Local Food Summit is February 16th, 2019.