Lesley Waterson can tell you five ways to prepare kohlrabi, drive a 10 ft. refrigerated truck and give directions to some of the most well hidden farms in Arkansas — not exactly the kinds of skills most marketing professionals learn on the job. Then again, most people don’t work for Heifer USA.
The stateside-focused division of Heifer International, most recognizable through their programs providing livestock to communities in third world countries, Heifer USA shares the mission to fight poverty and hunger by empowering enterprise and sparking self-reliance. With a triple bottom line social business model — one that keeps people, profit and planet in mind — the Little Rock Rotary Club co-founded Heifer USA focuses mainly on two of the poorest regions in the country: Appalachia and the Arkansas Delta.
“It’s such a challenging question: ‘How do you alleviate hunger?’” Waterson says. “The nature of that work in the U.S. isn’t like the countries Heifer normally works in overseas. The biggest difference in poverty in the U.S. and poverty in third world countries is that we have the infrastructure, but not for small-scale farmers.”
Only in its second year, the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program is the nonprofit’s relatively new and wildly popular endeavor, essentially a subscription service where members receive a weekly share of local, organic produce. Currently functioning under the name Foodshed Farms CSA, but subject to change with more input from the producers, the appeal is in a more direct relationship with farmers and with the source of each meal, as well as high-quality produce that keeps Arkansas food dollars local.
That’s where Waterson comes in. As the CSA project coordinator, it’s her job to present the program to the public, marketing and selling CSA shares, but that’s not all. On any given day, you might find her meeting with web developers or her internal team, working hands-on with the produce or driving a giant refrigerated truck.
“There’s a lot of back-road driving, there’s a lot of front porch sitting and just talking to people about the program,” Waterson says.
But those back roads aren’t all foreign to Waterson. She may have grown up in Fayetteville, but her summers were spent with family in rural Arkansas. Her mother’s hometown of Scranton in the northwest corner of the state has a population of 216, according to the 2013 census.
“I worked digging potatoes and picking okra with all my cousins and learned how to can plum jelly with my mom and my aunt,” Waterson says. “The rural environment is a part of my background. We have farmers who are actually working near my mom’s hometown. Those farm visits were really special because I’d been driving those old roads for years.”
It was while volunteering at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville and studying at the UCA Honors College that Waterson came to the realization that our food system isn’t what it should be and discovered a passion for the local food movement.
Now Waterson is part of a team with a bootstrapping spirit, filled with ambition about Heifer’s work building local food systems and spreading the CSA gospel. With 17 contributing farms across the state, there’s a lot of good news to spread.
There are two seasons of shares, the 18-week spring and summer session and the 6-week fall session. When you purchase a share, you are guaranteed 6-7 fresh, locally grown, GMO-free items every week. The multi-farm structure, including Heifer Ranch, is built to never depend on one farm for an item so that even in the event of crop failure, others can step in to fill the holes — like an insurance policy.
Planting the Seeds
It begins with farmer recruitment, which actually proves to be one of the toughest parts of the process. Farmers don’t have billboards, they don’t run radio ads. It’s word of mouth that most often connects Heifer and its growers. It requires a lot of detective work through things like farmers markets and co-ops. Even then, the program is sometimes met with resistance.
“I think humans in general, we’re just not used to change. It can be kind of scary,” Waterson says. “It’s a new opportunity, but you don’t always know if it’s the right one. There’s hesitation sometimes, but almost all of them want those new markets and stability.”
When selecting farmers, Heifer is constantly looking to support farmers who not only vary in crops, but also offer diversity in race, gender and status. Before anyone signs on the dotted line, however, farmers must show interest in sustainable practices. And most do; they recognize the growing demand for organic, locally sourced food.
Once a farmer is accepted, Waterson and team work with them to build extremely detailed spreadsheets with all of the information on what to grow, when to grow it and how it all syncs up with each farm.
Strengthening the relationship between consumer and producer is one of the program’s biggest goals, and that job becomes much easier when you have CSA farmers like Mary Bone.
Passionate and vibrant, Bone only just recently made the move to agriculture. As a little girl, her grandfather taught her to eat off the land through subsistence farming. Three years ago, she traded in the corporate world for the tractor she always wanted. Now she, her husband Rickey, and daughter and son-in-law Veronica and Corey Johnson form the team behind Light House Produce in Fargo, Arkansas.
“My passion is to grow fresh vegetables that will be distributed for individuals to enjoy,” Bone says, channelling her grandfather.
And it’s her hands and the other farmers’ that the CSA shares program will eventually fall into. Although Heifer currently incubates the program, they’re working toward pushing it out into a stakeholder ownership, a legal entity run by the farmers who created it.
“This will not be something where we just tell them how things should be run. We want them to be able to make those decisions about what markets to pursue, and how they want to build their individual farms, how those all work together,” Waterson says, “and they want it, too.”
Until then, the program will continue to operate under the Heifer umbrella, providing business and agricultural training for farmers and building community leadership, something that has also caught the eye of Baptist Health.
The first CSA institutional partner to do so, Baptist Health is teaming up with Heifer to integrate CSA shares into its preventative healthcare and wellness design in the workplace. Employees can buy into the program with payroll deduction options, on-campus deliveries and opportunities to learn about produce best practices.
“We don’t want to compete with and possibly damage existing markets. That’s why the institutional piece is incredibly valuable,” Waterson says. “It gives a way to build a cultural change within the employee population, a way to help support our farmers and keep food dollars local.”
It’s those local food dollars that make the CSA program beneficial to the entire state. Of the billions of dollars that Arkansans spent on food in 2014, only a small fraction was grown in-state. Keeping those dollars local stabilizes the agricultural climate and empowers the share members, giving them more autonomy over the food they eat.
But that doesn’t mean they get to choose what comes in each share box. Heifer keeps favorites in the rotation like strawberries and greens, but members also get to experiment with new items that maybe they wouldn’t have tried before, like kohlrabi. It’s an educational opportunity for Waterson, providing recipes and nutritional information, teaching how to eat in season, even explaining when children ask why there are no bananas in their boxes.
It’s no secret that eating meals together revitalizes the family element. Another chance to build that communal foundation comes in the CSA program’s signature event, Feast in the Field. The May 30 fundraiser on the grounds of Heifer International invites individuals and businesses to learn about the program and meet the very farmers providing the ingredients.
Heifer USA has heard the cry for local produce and worked toward a replenished agricultural structure. It takes a lot of time and trust, a lot of putting an arm around someone and building camaraderie, but the endeavor has yielded fulfillment in abundance.
“I love being able to work with a passionate team and be embedded in building the Arkansas local living economy. It’s truly rewarding to help bridge the gap between producers and our community with direct market access,” Waterson says. “Our community wants and needs more businesses with social missions and triple bottom lines, and I’m here to help that.”
In the Spotlight: Heifer CSA Farmers
5 Acre Farms, Pleasant Plains
Farmers: Brandon and Cat Gordon, and a few part-time farmers
What they grow: Tomatoes, kale, lettuce, peppers and more
Actively farming since 2009, Brandon provides technical assistance to the CSA’s new and transitioning farmers, and also mentors a high school student, Austin Passmore, on sustainable agriculture practices.
Dettelbach Farms, Wynne
Farmers: Steve and Jeff Dettelbach, and family
What they grow: Broccoli, cabbage, peppers and potatoes with plans to integrate livestock and grain in the future
Light House Produce, Fargo
Farmers: Mary and Rickey Bone, daughter and son-in-law Veronica and Corey Johnson
What they grow: Cabbage, purple hull peas, eggplant and broccoli
To sign up for the CSA– Contact FoodShedFarms.com, CSA@heifer.org, 907-2603
CSA FAST FACTS:
last spring: Heifer sold 150 shares
this spring: Heifer sold 400 shares
• As of 2014, $10 billion in food dollars is being lost in Arkansas.
• .07% of food products are sold by farmers directly to consumers.
• The general national average is that in traditional markets like grocery stores, 16 cents on the dollar goes back to farmers. Heifer’s CSA program gives about 80 cents of each dollar back to farmers, last year totaling about $70,000. This year, Waterson is anticipating close to $200,000 staying in the pockets of its participating farmers.
All facts provided by Lesley Waterson, Heifer USA
Photos courtesy of Bryan Clifton/Heifer International