“Everybody used to joke that I might ship my second little one in my station wagon whereas I used to be making produce deliveries,” Renee Giroux recounts. As the overall supervisor of the nonprofit Northwest Connecticut Meals Hub (NWC Meals Hub), Giroux spends a number of time in that station wagon. She coordinates the pickup and supply of 35 Litchfield county farms’ recent, domestically grown produce to space meals pantries (as donations) and wholesale clients, resembling colleges, grocery shops and eating places. 

It’s a number of work and a number of group. But it surely’s work that Giroux fortunately chooses. From 2013 to 2016, she was the New York Metropolis restaurateur David Bouley’s farmer, rising greater than 300 kinds of herbs in downtown Manhattan. However then in 2017, Giroux and her pastry chef husband moved to Litchfield County to begin their very own farm. She rapidly recognized issues inside the distribution system. 

“Small- to medium-sized farms depend on gross sales similar to different companies. Rising the product isn’t the issue,” says Giroux. “The issue is discovering the channels of distribution. Meals hubs bridge the advertising and marketing, gross sales and distribution channels whereas taking out any middlemen.”

In a feasibility examine performed by the nonprofit Accomplice Sustainable Wholesome Communities in 2015, the native farmers expressed a standard want for a Meals Hub. 

So, Giroux began one. 

Renee Giroux. Images by Winter Caplanson.

The NWC Meals Hub brings native farmers collectively to create neighborhood, collaborate and perceive the larger points they face. “It may be actually difficult for small farms to rent the suitable workers and meet the wants of our general neighborhood,” says Giroux. The overarching aim is to bridge the hole between the meals insecure, meals pantries, farm-to-school tasks and feeding the overall inhabitants. 

“My mission is so easy: It’s to lift consciousness about small household farms all through New England and past; to indicate how robust and mighty and resilient all of us are; how we’re the spine and the material to a number of our communities,” says Giroux. “Each morning you need to consider your farmer.”

In Connecticut, small farms characterize 28 p.c of the overall farms, lots of that are first-generation farms. Small, first-generation farms are sometimes prone to widespread enterprise start-up points. The NWC Meals Hub goals to assist the native agriculture sector’s 200 farms overcome widespread hurdles, resembling establishing social connections and distribution channels. 

Moreover, Giroux advocates for honest farmer pricing. Whether or not the meals is offered to wholesalers or donated to nonprofits, the farmers obtain the identical worth for his or her produce made potential by way of grants. 

Renee Giroux. Images by Winter Caplanson.

The native farms Giroux works with develop greater than 100 totally different kinds of native produce, together with microgreens, minimize greens, corn, apples, cucumbers, collard greens, kohlrabi, tomatoes, chicory, endive and extra. 

This previous yr, the NWC Meals Hub distributed greater than 100,000 kilos of produce to 16 meals pantries, 24 colleges and quite a few eating places and grocery shops. All produce is uploaded weekly, on Sundays, by the farms, and the ordering platform opens up Monday for nonprofits and wholesale patrons to put their orders. “The whole lot is recent in, recent out. By working collectively as a farm crew, we publish what now we have out there, the orders are positioned and, inside 24 hours, it’s delivered to the buyer, on youngsters’s plates or being handed out on the meals pantries,” says Giroux. 

Crop planning and future projections are made within the offseason by bigger meals pantry administrators. Nearly all of Meals Hub’s funding comes by way of a Native Meals Buy Help Cooperative Settlement Program grant, with further donations offered by native nonprofits and people. They’re presently funded by way of 2025, “however, ideally, we’d like to interrupt even by 2024 so we don’t need to depend on donations,” says Giroux. 

Discovering pantries to which to donate the surplus produce is the simplest a part of the job, as they’re small and shouldn’t have a lot funding to buy recent produce to serve their purchasers. In response to the nonprofit United for Alice, in 2021, of Connecticut’s greater than 1.4 million households, 552,710 (35 p.c) had incomes under the ALICE Threshold of Monetary Survival. (ALICE stands for Asset Restricted, Earnings Constrained, Employed or incomes greater than the Federal Poverty Degree however not sufficient to afford the fundamentals the place they dwell.)

NWC Meals Hub additionally works with ProduceRx and NourishRx to offer curated containers of farm-fresh produce for sufferers with particular medical wants. Giroux coordinates with Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, CT, which focuses on getting nutritionally dense meals to sufferers with underlying well being situations, particularly Sort 2 diabetes. Quite a few research present that “produce prescriptions” (beneath the umbrella of “meals as medication”) positively have an effect on sufferers’ diets, lower meals insecurity, improve illness administration and cut back general healthcare prices.

After seven years of ups and downs, NWC’s Meals Hub mannequin is now operating easily. “When it began, it was simply me, boots on the bottom, doing every little thing,” says Giroux. She was the whole enterprise, dealing with invoicing, deliveries, taking orders and forging connections. The NWC Meals Hub now has a small community of volunteers, two drivers and a coordinator to speak with farmers in addition to remedy any last-minute order points. With the NWC Meals Hub operating in the next gear, Giroux’s personal Subaru ought to get some relaxation.