Local Food Hub Solves a Small Farmer's Biggest Woe: Getting Food to the People

For small farmers infrastructure has always been an issue. Getting the food to the people on a large scale is the only way to make a living, but at the same time it's a big barrier to entry. Small farmers know how to grow the best and most sustainable produce around, but they often don't have the funding to properly market and get their goods to the customer.

I wrote this weekend over at TreeHugger about how Local Food Hub has made local food a reality for the University of Virginia Hospital. With the help of the organization, the hospital is having more and more produce shipped in from area farms. Green peppers, squash, apples, tomatoes, broccoli, pears, and other seasonal produce are shipped into the hospital each week.

Local Food Hub is a non-profit that provides the small farms of central Virginia with services that they normally wouldn't be able to afford. The non-profit helps small farms network and market their produce. They meet with farms at the beginning of the season to discuss overall demand for certain crops and they connect growers to consumers. They provide farmers with rentable refrigeration equipment and delivery services. They even offer liability insurance at a reasonable price for small farmers as well as processing facilities. It's my hope that organizations like this will start to pop up across the nation. But for now, donate to Local Food Hub and keep this vision alive.

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