It's far easier for large food purchasers in Nashville to buy produce from 2,000 miles away than it is to buy produce that was grown next door. For example, a school might need to call 20 local farms to find lettuce for its salad bar, while it could order a hundred pounds of lettuce from a distributor like Sysco with one mouse click. And even if they did find the lettuce locally, how would they get it? Most small farms lack the funds needed for refrigerated trucks, efficient cold storage, and other services like washing and packaging that most larger buyers demand.

As a result, local farms are largely excluded from the mainstream food system: grocery stores, school and hospital cafeterias, restaurants, and caterers. Yes, farmers markets and CSAs have allowed some farms to thrive despite being locked out of the food supply chain--but if local food is ever going to make up a sizable amount of our food consumption, we need to think bigger.

Despite the huge amount of interest in local food, Nashville's farmers are struggling: only 0.36% of Davidson County farmland is still used to farm fruits or vegetables. As a result, we end up importing our food from an average of 2,000 miles away: only about 30 cents of each food dollar stays in the local economy. Based on studies performed by other foodsheds like Cuyahoga County in Ohio, if Davidson County were to grow even 1/3 of its food locally, it would create about 4,000 farming, processing, and food distribution jobs—enough to eliminate unemployment in Davidson County.

And it's not just about economics. That food coming from far away? Well, it sucks. Industrial agribusiness cultivates the same few high-yield crops bred for fast maturation and thick skins—and as a result, we lost 75% of genetic diversity in crops in the last century. Industrial food is also more vulnerable to contamination, since produce from hundreds of farms can be intermingled in one facility. Of course, there's also the huge energy cost of shipping food long distances and keeping it refrigerated for long periods of time, as well as the higher carbon footprint associated with the farming practices used on giant commercial farms.

Meanwhile, small local farms protect biodiversity and grow varieties optimized for taste and nutrition, not dollars and durability. They preserve open space, contain development, improve soil quality, sequester carbon, and can help revitalize blighted urban areas. They connect us to nature and our agricultural heritage, reminding us of our responsibilities to the land and to the earth.

So, given these advantages, why have we created a modern food supply chain that is hyper efficient at bringing in food from thousands of miles away, but utterly incapable of sourcing food locally? And what can we do to reverse this situation?

By aggregating and distributing produce on behalf of all of Nashville’s growers, whether they’re a backyard garden or a 50 acre farm, we enable local food to reach the economies of scale needed to compete with conventional produce distributors.

We confirm local produce needs and price points of wholesale buyers, and use that information to help farms plan their production for the season. Our farms get 87% of our revenue—a far cry from the 60-70% of other distributors, but a percentage we believe is essential if we are to bridge the income needs of small organic farmers with the budgets of larger institutions. Once the planning is done, we put the products on our online ordering system twice a week, and buyers place orders. Farms deliver the produce to us, and we sort, aggregate, and pack it into orders and bring it to the buyer.

We currently work with 15 farms and market gardens located within 100 miles of downtown.