Cooperative Components

The makings of a true local food system

Over the past 50 years, our big-picture perspective of food production and distribution has shifted. What we once saw as a linear input-output “food chain” we are now more likely to describe as a “food system.” The latter term is a more accurate descriptor of the complex network of producers, processors, and distributors that work together to put food on today’s tables.

The following stories were published in conjunction with the story about Rosebird Farms. Collectively, these entrepreneurs’ cooperative spirits and familiarity with systems have significantly expanded access to the bounty produced by Arizona’s small-scale producers. 

SUN PRODUCE COOPERATIVE

Cindy Gentry is driven by the desire to feed people. Her career includes working with farmers to reroute unneeded produce to food banks, opening farmers markets, and bringing the Farmers Market Nutrition Program and SNAP to farmers markets in the Phoenix area.

The decades Gentry spent doing this work gave her a unique perspective. “The light went on,” Gentry says. “One in five adults and one in four children in Arizona aren’t getting enough to eat, and the people growing the food aren’t making enough money to live. The problem with hunger isn’t that there isn’t enough food; it’s access. The problem at the farm level isn’t that there isn’t enough food; it’s access and distribution. It’s the same thing.”

In 2017, Gentry and colleagues formed the nonprofit Sun Produce Cooperative. “We started with nine growers and one customer—Litchfield Elementary School District—and my little green Nissan and a friend’s Tahoe,” Gentry says. “We ran around picking up food from farms, figured out an ordering system, and then brought it to Litchfield. … We were saving the growers from having to have staff and trucks, and they could stay on the land doing what they like to do, which is grow food.”

Though she initially had doubts, both the demand for Sun Produce’s services and the relationships that sustain it kept growing. Their core customer base of schools, restaurants, and community organizations expanded when she met Erik Stanford of Pivot Produce. “We began moving food south and then moving food north,” Gentry says. “We have aspirations to do more marketing and education, but it became clear in the last couple of years that we are a transportation network. We’re the link between the customer and the produce.”

Sun Produce is more than that; it’s a source of solutions. “The director of Agua Fria High School District came to us because the kids noticed a difference in the quality of salad mix they were being served,” Gentry says. The farm had switched to using a broadline distributor instead of directly delivering its greens to the West Valley. “We worked it out to pick up the freshly harvested produce and bring it to the schools within two to three days of harvest. The relationship grew, and now we service six schools in the district,” Gentry says.

In May of last year, Sun Produce and partners solved another problem through a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We had been coming up to Paulden on Tuesdays and taking over Whipstone’s cooler and leaving food there as a sort of relay point for Rosebird Farms and other places,” Gentry says, “but it was time to get out of their cooler, make more room, and think of what the potential is for others. [Whipstone Farm owners] Shanti and Cory were amazing. With their blessing, we were able to get grant money, pour the concrete pad, construct the pole barn, and build a new cooler on their property.”

Sun Produce distributes products from a network of over 40 growers in Central Arizona. In conjunction with northern and southern partners, they work with over 70 producers and distribute throughout eight counties. 

The funding available to create those kinds of solutions has changed, but the determination of those doing the work hasn’t. “When we were told [funding] was going to be cut—and now it is cut—it was sort of, like, ‘Well, do we throw the towel in?’ The answer across the board was ‘no.’ We are making inroads and building relationships. We are working for a healthier, stronger economy. It’s not time to quit; it’s time to figure out our marketing and distribution network and keep going so we have farms, and we have real food.” 

PIVOT PRODUCE

Erik Stanford grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Until he started Pivot Produce, his world was restaurants. 

“I got my first job in the industry washing dishes when I was 14,” he says. “I was a chef at Hotel Congress, Janos, and a few others in Tucson.” Stanford credits cheffing at 5 Points as the catalyst for Pivot Produce. 

“They were serious about local sourcing, and I had always been serious about local sourcing in my personal life, but it never really translated to restaurants,” he says. “When I took over ordering and operations as their chef we started developing systems where we would plan with our growers a season ahead of time—do menu planning alongside crop planning—and really develop a system in which we could guarantee farmers a certain amount of sales.”

This forward thinking and level of collaboration were unheard of at the time. “That lit the lightbulb,” says Stanford. He started thinking that many area restaurants in addition to 5 Points would benefit from an organized system sourcing from local growers. “So that’s what Pivot set out to do.”

Pivot Produce launched in 2016 with four restaurants and four growers. In the beginning, the business was “wholesale or no sale,” focusing exclusively on restaurants. In 2018, Stanford collaborated with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona to bring local food into schools. Stanford had just moved the business to a new warehouse when Covid hit.

“We were left with a lot of guarantees to growers that we were going to buy their crops, so then we started what we now call Pivot Direct, which is our home delivery CSA program. Now, 5–6 years later, it remains a pretty large part of our business. We continue to work in partnership with a bunch of community programs that distribute food, and we help them write grants, so Pivot now serves restaurants, schools, community programs, and the CSA program.”

Since the beginning, Stanford has worked to raise awareness about the value of purchasing local. “The product we’re delivering is often harvested the same day or within two days. With conventional distribution, that’s not the case; the product often goes bad quickly or arrives in poor condition,” he says. 

The challenge his partners—both community organizations and the local growers—now face involves funding.

“We’ve put a lot of energy into farm-to-school programs—both locally and statewide,” Stanford says. “There was just so much promising funding that allowed schools … to get reimbursed for anything they purchased locally.”

Stanford adds that they can clearly see the benefits to farms, but with the program now ending, that will change. 

“I think it will be a huge deficit to our business by the end of this year. Pivot can shift to doing more CSA subscriptions or try to get more restaurants, but a lot of farms sell directly to schools through federal grant programs. I think there are a lot of growers who have been relying pretty heavily on federal income for the past four or five years, and I’m really worried about what next year looks like for them.”

Pivot sources from over 20 growers and producers in Pima, Graham, Cochise, Santa Cruz, Pinal, and Yuma counties, as well as small-acreage farms in Tucson. The food is mostly distributed around Tucson, though some finds its way north via Sun Produce. 

“We move a lot of eggs from Winkelman up there. During apple season, we send 50 cases a week up north,” says Stanford. The balance between sending and receiving shifts with the seasons.

Pivot sources from over 20 growers and producers in Pima, Graham, Cochise, Santa Cruz, Pinal, and Yuma counties, as well as small-acreage farms in Tucson. The food is mostly distributed around Tucson, though some finds its way north via Sun Produce.

THE JOURNEY

To understand the tremendous work being done, consider how a fresh food produced by a small, locally-owned farm might get distributed throughout the state. 

Here’s how a bottle of milk journeys through a series of refrigerators:

1. Golden Rule Dairy, a small family-owned and operated dairy in Elfrida, produces raw milk. 

2. Once bottled, the product makes its way to Pivot Produce, where it spends the night in their walk-in fridge. 

3. The next day, Sun Produce Cooperative picks it up. What isn’t distributed to their customers spends the night in their cooler. 

4. The next day, the milk travels to a fridge in Paulden. 

5. Shortly after, Rosebird Farms picks up and brings it to Flagstaff. 

In the words of Stanford, “This milk is distributed two to three days after being bottled in Cochise County. This was never possible before on the local regional scale.”