Where do we even start? South Island Farm Hub has been with us from the very beginning. They are a fantastic local delivery service that connects the community with fresh, locally grown produce and artisanal goods from farms and producers across the south island. Their dedication to supporting small businesses like ours has been invaluable, helping us share our vision and products with more families in the community. We hope you enjoy our conversation.
Tell us about the mission of South Island Farm Hub and how it supports local farmers and communities?
Our mission is to “make fresh food from local farms and food producers available to everyone in our community.”
We do this by operating as a local food aggregator and distributor. We partner with 85+ local farms and food producers and host an online farmers market platform for them to sell their goods. It’s sort of like an Etsy for local food—farmers and producers upload their own products each week and set their own prices, and we add a small markup on top of that. Then, customers can log on every Thursday to Sunday, add goods to their cart, and have it delivered the following week.
We also offer Harvest and Organic Harvest subscription produce boxes and Island Meat Boxes. These run year-round and feature a mix of local vegetables and fruits, or meat and seafood.
These programs support local farmers because they give them another outlet to sell their food, and takes a lot of the logistical, marketing, and customer service work out of their hands, allowing them to focus on growing the food. For communities, it’s an easy, year-round way to access local food, if they don’t have time to make it to the farmers market every week, or want to get all their local groceries in one spot—from veggies to eggs to meat to bread and pantry items.
What initiatives or programs does South Island Farm Hub have in place to make fresh, local food more accessible to residents, particularly those in underserved areas?
We operate the Farmbucks program, which connects charities and schools with fresh produce from local farms. It’s a wonderful program because we work with these community organizations, like Our Place, Cool-Aid Society, and Victoria Women’s Transition House, who are already doing the amazing work of making food accessible to those who need it the most.
What Farmbucks does is give them the buying power essentially to purchase local produce from the FarmHub to use in their community meals, pantry programs, hampers, and more. We subsidize every order they make through the store by 50%, which makes ordering local food feasible for organizations with pretty tight food budgets.
Eventually, we would like to support individual residents/households as well, but this requires increased funding and developing a different sort of framework. Programs like the BC Farmers Market Nutrition Coupon Program are wonderful for this as well.
How does promoting local food systems contribute to sustainability, and what role does South Island Farm Hub play in fostering a more sustainable food ecosystem?
There are so many different ways local food systems can contribute to sustainability. The carbon footprint for one—more than 93 percent of our suppliers are based within 60km of Victoria, and we only deliver within the Greater Victoria area. There’s also a lot less waste involved with local food—farmers harvest to order for the FarmHub, and we try to use as minimal packaging as possible. Supporting these farmers means supporting the ways they grow and treat the soil as well, enriching it and enhancing biodiversity.
We hope to make it as accessible as possible for people to support these local farms and bolster the local food system. It’s also exciting to see the collaborations between farmers, producers, and the food hub come into play—like Wholesyum Baby buying beets from Trouble Acre (one of our suppliers as well), creating the product at our partner Kitchen Connect, and selling through the FarmHub—full circle!
What challenges do you face in balancing the needs of farmers and consumers, and how does the hub address these challenges to ensure fair access and pricing?
It can definitely be a challenge at times! The FarmHub is the sort of go-between for farmers and consumers, so we hear both sides of it. One challenge is the online aspect—managing customers’ expectations around what the produce will look like in terms of size, small blemishes, etc. Unlike a standard farmers market, where customers can check out the produce before buying, they are essentially trusting us to provide quality produce for them, and therefore we are trusting farmers to maintain a certain quality standard when they sell through us.
Farmers and food producers set their own base price of products in the store, so they decide what they get paid for the product essentially, and then we add a markup. Because we’re a charity, our markup is pretty minimal compared to standard grocery stores, and with the inflation driving grocery prices overall, a lot of local produce is the same price now—or even cheaper!—than imported goods.
Looking ahead, how do you envision the future of South Island Farm Hub and its role in strengthening local food networks and creating resilient communities?
We would love to extend our distribution network, both geographically and in terms of what we can deliver and to whom. The past two summers, we’ve partnered with several farms to deliver their CSA shares which was exciting, as it takes a lot of work off their plates and familiarizes customers with our service. We would like to sell more produce on a bigger scale to institutions like Island Health, UVic, etc. (Camosun Interurban has been ordering with us for the last year, and are great to work with!). It’s tricky because a lot of these places have strict food budgets and pretty regimented systems of food ordering, so it takes time and relationship building, but it’d be worth it because so many farmers have a lot more food to sell than they’re able to actually move.
We’re also excited about all the developments with Kitchen Connect, our partner commercial kitchen facility. It’s been great to be able to preserve the harvest and partner with farmers to create value-added goods that they and the FarmHub can sell year-round.
There are so many amazing local food initiatives happening in the South Island, so I think overall we just want to be part of this network and hopefully prioritize collaboration, sustainability, and equity as we all move forward together to strengthen our community and local food system.
Connect with the South Island FarmHub:
Follow on Instagram and Facebook
Have a look at their website
And, of course, try out their online shop.
(You’ll be able to order Wholesyum Baby Purées next spring! Along with other amazing food heros featured on the wholesyum heart.)
Know a local food hero we should feature here? We’d love to hear from you! Submit your story idea here.