Building Trust is the Wave of the Future

—by Judith Sims

Did you know that Cedar Summit Farms has yet to turn a profit? That Whole Foods refused to buy produce from Minnesota and Wisconsin producers following the destructive floods of 2007? (Okay, so they followed it up with some kind of conciliatory gesture.) That hunger in the suburbs is now double that of hunger in the cities?

These are the kinds of details that make “Mapping the Minnesota Food Industry” memorable. It’s a study that offers a window on how Minnesota’s food industry works (and doesn’t work).

The study was commissioned by Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Center for Prevention, one of whose goals is to increase healthy eating, and executed by Ken Meter of the Crossroads Resource Center, a non-profit that provides services such as economic analysis, business development and tools for community self-determination.

Analyzing Minnesota's food industry

The meat of the study concerns — well, meat, actually, in the form of a number of profiles of local producers and processors of livestock, but also of produce, milk, and other products. These profiles of “wise practitioners” give a face to Meter’s economic analysis of Minnesota’s food industry, which includes some sobering information on the effect of that industry on our population’s health.

For example, Meter claims that “food-related medical conditions have become a leading cause of death” and cites an estimate of $1.3 billion to treat obesity-related diseases in Minnesota as support. This is part of the basis for a critique of commodity economics, whose size and power shape which foods are most affordable and available to consumers.

Big producers and retail outlets cannot support selling high quality products, for example, because their only raison d’être is to lower price margins. Retailers with enormous buying power can demand and get prices that squeeze producers.

In contrast, a business like Coastal Seafoods, one of four protoypes profiled at length in the study, can buy fish from a single seller in Florida who doesn’t always have fish, but the quality is excellent when he does.

Coastal Seafoods has fostered a number of relationships that have flexibility, resiliency, and trust as part of the business relationship, and therefore they can offer a greater variety of fish as well as better quality than their commodity-based competitors.

In co-ops we trust

Perhaps the most notable point that “Mapping Minnesota’s Food Industry” makes is that trust is a central feature of emerging business models. As we all know, since we experience it here at Hampden Park Co-op, co-ops are not just a business. They have educated consumers and been educated by them; they have encouraged the humane treatment of livestock, and created markets for herbal and other alternative health remedies. They created the organic food movement. They introduced the use of natural ingredients in a variety of other consumer goods.

These accomplishments were founded on trust-based relationships among producers, suppliers, and consumers. Many businesses were born. Technology for selling items in bulk was developed.

Mainstream food stores adopted these technologies and capitalized on another co-op achievement — selling produce. A department that was formerly a loss leader started to show profits once co-ops, through their customers’ demand, made fresh fruits and vegetables look more desirable.

And if that’s not enough, Meter says, co-ops show that small stores that allow for bike- and pedestrian-friendly access can survive in a big-box era.

What forms the future?

Who knows what survival will entail in the future? Author Meter lists energy prices and availability, prices for crops, financial markets, and climate change as factors to contend with in the future.

To see Meter’s recommendations, you can search under “Mapping Minnesota’s Food Industry” on the Crossroads Resource Center's web site,  or click here to download the report directly. enter http://www.crcworks.org/mnfood.pdf. And be sure to check out the study’s appendixes — there are useful lists such as those of crops grown locally by month and suppliers to co-ops, as well as ten or more additional short interviews with locals.

[Judith Sims is an erstwhile journalist.]