Northeastern IPM Center Partnership Grants Projects Funded, 2006

*Award shown is total amount to be used over the course of the project term.

Project Summary

The key to rewarding growers for their innovative and often risky adoption of advanced IPM practices lies in building demand in the marketplace for advanced IPM farm products. Building demand requires the education of (i) trade buyers (the gatekeepers to the supermarket and food service industries), (ii) store-level department managers (the service providers who interact with shoppers), and (iii) consumers, the ultimate spark and source of demand.

In this project, Red Tomato develops two educational/promotional vehicles for its Eco Apple program, both targeted at supermarket trade buyers and store-level department managers.

Because organic apples are next to impossible to raise in the northeastern United States at a wholesale/supermarket volume and quality standard, advanced IPM offers an extraordinary opportunity to provide millions of shoppers who are searching for the best locally-grown produce available, with earth-friendly, advanced-IPM (certified), Northeast apples.

Red Tomato, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization will convene and coordinate an IPM Working Group including apple growers, agricultural scientists and extension agents, and its own in-house team of salespeople, communications manager, and art director. It’s the close working relationship among growers, scientists, and marketers that adds unusual depth and practicality to this project.

Principal deliverables will be (1) an educational brochure directed at supermarket trade buyers and store-level produce department managers that focuses on the importance of IPM and locally-raised produce, and makes it easier for them to present this information to their customers. Members also will develop (2) plans for a trade booth display for presentation at major food industry trade shows. Both the brochure and display booth will feature northeastern Eco Apples raised to advanced IPM standards and certified as “ecologically grown.” The brochure will be used and disseminated by RT employees in daily sales and education work during 2006.

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Objectives

Red Tomato, a 501(c)3 organization, will convene 10-12 stakeholders from 5 Northeastern states—MA, NH, VT, CT, and NY.

The principal deliverables of this working group will be

1) an educational brochure directed at regional trade buyers and store produce department managers that provides information to help them better understand the importance of IPM and locally-raised produce AND informs them about how best to present this information to their customers.

2) plans for a trade booth to be displayed at major food industry trade shows. Both the brochure and trade show booth display will feature Northeastern “Eco-Apples,” raised to IPM standards and certified as “ecologically grown.”

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Problem, Background, and Justification

Problem and Context

Apples represent a significant part of the agricultural economy in the Northeast, generating over $525 million annually. Some apple connoisseurs argue that the Northeast’s particular soil, climate, and diversity of varieties make our region’s apples the best tasting in the country.

Apple growers in this region have been struggling for the last ten years. Indeed, the economic outlook for all production agriculture (medium-sized farms that rely on wholesaling) in the Northeast is increasingly grim. Between 1997 to 2002, New England lost 542 fruit farms, a 15% decrease. This is due, in large part, to an increase in competition from growers outside the region and country, and to rising costs of production.

On the environmental front, apple growers readily admit that the pesticides they use are harmful to the environment and to human health—particularly to themselves, their families, and their workers. Despite the existence of tools to reduce toxic pesticides in orchards, widespread adoption of advanced IPM practices has yet to occur. These IPM practices are generally more expensive than conventional practices. Growers are unwilling to adopt practices that make them less competitive, reduce financial returns, or that may cause crop loss or reduction in crop quality. Given all the pressures they face, Northeast apple farmers are understandably risk-averse.

On the brighter side, there is growing demand for locally grown produce that is safe to eat, great tasting, and less harmful to the environment. The U.S. is in the early stages of a slow transition to a food system driven principally by peoples’ desire for healthful and safe high-quality foods, and by their desire for knowledge about the source of their food. These desires can be tapped to bring increased value and long-term sustainability for Northeast farms.

The challenge is to convince trade buyers and store level produce managers, first, that advanced IPM products can fill this growing demand; and, second, that the benefits of advanced IPM can be successfully communicated to their customers, the shoppers. These trade buyers are the gatekeepers. They stand between local farmers and the millions of consumers who are wanting fresher, more flavorful, locally-grown produce.

Background on Red Tomato

Red Tomato (RT) is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization that works in the marketplace. RT works closely with farmers and scientists as it creates supply chains of locally-grown products to satisfy the needs of its customers (mostly supermarket chains) and their customers (the ultimate consumers).

Twelve years after co-founding the fair trade coffee company Equal Exchange, Michael Rozyne started Red Tomato. He wanted to translate the fair trade experience from coffee grown by Third-World farmers to produce grown by U.S. family farmers. Rozyne developed the concept between 1995 and 1997 with input from more than 100 sustainable agriculture experts, farmers, scholars and activists.

Red Tomato began using a communications and community orgaizing approach to link consumers and farrmes. By 2000, RT developed quality control systems and an overnight warehousing capacity. The organization consolidated over 100 varieties of fruitws and vegetables from 35 family farmers, delivering three-times weekly directly to 40 stores in greater Boston and Philadelphia. RT won a hard-earned reputation among farmers and retailers as a reliable, fair supplier of high-quality locally-grown fruits and vegetables.

By the end of 2002, however, it became clear that the costs of RT’s local distribution system were too high. The model was not on track to become economically self-sufficient. In 2003, RT changed its mode of operation to one that utilizes the existing distribution infrastructures of business partners such as producers, customers, whoesalers, and independent truckers. RT narrowed its local product line, lowered operating costs, and increased productivity substantially.

Today RT has trading relationships with 30 farmers in the Northeastern states. Since its inception, RT has brokered over $3 million dollars of family farm produce. Some 13% of the produce sold was grown by watermelon farmers who belong to five farmer co-ops in the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC).

RT products reach hundreds of thousands of consumers through the following customers: Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Big Y Supermarkets, Donelan’s, Harvest Cooperatives and other food co-ops, Omni Supermarkets, Stop and Shop, City Fresh Foods, Alberts Organics, Shapiro Produce Co., and independent grocers through Associated Grocers of New England

Background on Eco Apples

RT participated in the Core Values Northeast eco certification program for years, and then later in the Food Alliance program. These efforts and one other, Partners With Nature, failed to build marketing programs that delivered tangible economic benefits to growers. All three programs ceased to operate in the Northeast. In 2005, with funding from the EPA and private foundations, RT decided to launch its own eco certification for advanced-IPM apples.

RT hired Tom Green of the IPM Institute of North America to write the “Eco Apple Protocol and Grower Self-Assessment,” and to manage third-party certification of farms. RT then assembled a multi-state team of veteran apple growers, plus scientists from U.Mass. and Cornell—including two plant pathologists, an entomologist, weed scientist, tree fruit specialist, plant and soil scientist, and an IPM scout—to serve as an advisory board over the standards.

The aims were: (1) to position these high quality apples as the most earth-friendly apples available from the Northeast, at a supermarket/wholesale volume and quality standard, (2) to find and grow new markets that compensate growers, eventually, at above-conventional-market prices, and (3) thereby provide economic rewards and incentives that lead directly, and indirectly, to more widespread adoption of advanced IPM practices for apples.

Red Tomato introduced Eco Apples to the market in late August 2005. Six farms, approximately 650 acres total, earned Eco Apple certification for 2005: Alyson’s Apple Orchard, Walpole, N.H.; Clark Bros. Orchard, Ashfield, Mass.; Lyman Orchards, Middlefield, Conn.; Scott Farm, Dummerston, Vt.; Stone Ridge Orchard, Stone Ridge, N.Y.; Sunrise Orchards, Cornwall, Vt. The apples reached approximately 200 supermarkets and food co-ops, mostly in New England, but including south to the Mid-Atlantic states and parts of Texas. Some participating farmers sold Eco-Apples directly on their own, reaching 25 additional supermarkets in the Price Chopper and Hannaford Bros. chains in Vermont and New York.

RT apple sales in 2004 were ~7,000 cases. By November 2005, the number of Eco Apple cases sold for the year was at 16,000.

Applicability to other regions. The Eco Apple program and protocol are applicable to other regions in the eastern half of the United States, especially the upper Midwest. RT has already begun discussion with a participant in a similar project in Wisconsin about the prospect for cooperation, even for the possible adoption of Eco Apple marketing materials and approaches to the Midwest.

Uniquely poised for success

There are several historical and circumstantial factors that point this project toward success:

• Organic apples are next to impossible to raise in the northeastern United States at a wholesale/supermarket volume and quality standard—this due to scab, curculio, apple maggot, fly speck, sooty blotch, and a few other voracious pests. This makes apples an especially good vehicle for education on advanced IPM practices.
• Red Tomato is unusual in its combination of mission-driven structure, business experience and culture, and close working relationships with farmers and scientists. This makes RT a qualified messenger for this rather complex message.
• Advanced IPM offers an extraordinary opportunity to provide millions of shoppers with earth-friendly safer apples.
• RT has been marketing IPM products as IPM products, and promoting IPM fruits and vegetables, since its inception in 1997. Eco Apples in 2005 were better received and better understood than any other IPM product we’ve tried previously. And that was without educational materials targeted at the trade. The stage has been set.

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Evaluation Plans

Project success will be measured according to the following indicators:
Quantitative: Red Tomato will report the number of brochures produced, the number that reach our target audience of trade buyers and store level produce managers, and on completion of plans for a food industry trade show booth.
Qualitative: anecdotal feebdack will be obtained from target audience members along with anecdotal evidence of what happened in stores
Impact on sales: key impact indicators will occur as a) new accounts taken during 2006, 2007 and b) growth in sales of Eco-Apples.

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