Everyone deserves access to fresh, nourishing food.
Our local farms and food hubs create lasting positive impact by promoting food access, protecting ecosystems, and building community around food.
Community Impact Stories
Feeding Families, Supporting Farmers
As supply and distribution chains broke down across the country, a region in rural Montana took matters into their own hands to ensure their communities had access to fresh, healthy food. As a part of a multi-partner collaboration, Western Montana Growers Cooperative tackled hunger on the Flathead Reservation and economic insecurity for farmers in Montana.
Over 8,000 food boxes distributed from Western Montana Growers Co-op to Mission Valley families
Western Montana Growers Cooperative and Mission West Community Development Partners have worked together to distribute nearly 8,500 food boxes to families in need in Western Montana since July and an additional 1,000 will be distributed by mid-December.
LINC Foods builds for a local food future beyond big ag
LINC is part of a growing nationwide network of local food companies that work with small farmers to help them reach bigger markets. These so-called food hubs allow producers to spend less time marketing and selling at venues like farmers markets and more time growing the food itself. LINC is unusual in that, unlike most food hubs, it is cooperatively owned by the workers who run it and the farmers who grow the produce it sells.
Puget Sound Food Hub delivers 19,000 produce boxes to families
From June through mid-September, the food hub distributed nearly 19,000 boxes to families in need as part of a federal program that began this spring to address hunger and support farmers, said Andrew Yokom, general manager at the food hub, located on Best Road west of Mount Vernon. Yokom said the USDA paid $22 for each of the weekly produce boxes, which included six to eight items to feed a family of three to four. The 19,000 boxes over three months amounted to about 200,000 pounds of locally grown produce, he said.