Springing into Action and Also Winding Down

The flowering trees, days of sunshine and increasingly common rain showers that filled the past week are a sure sign that Spring has finally arrived here in western Montana. 

The return of warmer temperatures and buzzing pollinators also means that farmers have moved into full production mode. Vegetables, herbs and flowers with their neat yet crowded rows have begun to fill the many hoop houses which dot Montana's valleys and line its rural highways. 

A non-member harvesting Red Russian kale in his hoop house

Even though the tempo is picking up for the growers in the area, the project is winding down its first round of fieldwork. This week represented Nicole's last full week in the field. She mostly focused on contacting and interviewing growers who are not currently members of the Western Montana Growers Cooperative (WMGC). 

Non-member growers are important to the study because they provide alternative or outside perspectives on WMGC, its community impacts, and the feasibility of food hubs as strategies for rural development. Including both members and non-members thus decreases the risk of biasing data and results.

Showing off beautiful radishes from a non-member farm

As such, over the last few days Nicole met with 7 non-member growers (4 women and 3 men), located in Arlee, Hamilton and many places in between. The operations of non-member growers interviewed proved to be quite diverse, spanning apple orchards to greenhouse starts to speciality eggs to leafy greens. 

Comparing eggs from a non-member's birds (L to R: chicken, duck, turkey, goose) 

Nicole also spoke with 2 more WMGC member-growers (1 woman and 1 man). This week's 9 interviews combine to bring the project totals to 20 member growers (including a grower's long-term employee) and 10 non-member growers. 

No additional key informants were interviewed this week. However, Nicole is trying to schedule a call with a non-member grower who sits on the board of the Montana Organic Association.    

An old barnyard overlooking the Bitterroot Mountains

As this round of field work comes to an end, the project will transition from conducting interviews to transcribing audio recordings of the interviews. The transcriptions will then be coded based on previously-established theoretical themes as well as themes that emerge on their own from the data. 

Check back next week for a full review of the 4+ weeks Nicole spent in beautiful western Montana!

A Food Hub Gets Too Big for its Rural Britches

The past week was a busy one for the project! Nicole interviewed 6 more WMGC member-growers in addition to 1 member-grower's paid employee and 1 non-member grower. The running total now stands at 18 member-growers (11 women and 7 men) and 3 non-member growers (2 women and 1 man). 

Growers interviewed currently span a range of 100 miles and 3 counties across the Bitterroot and Mission Mountain valleys. Their farms are located as far south as Stevensville in Ravalli County, up north to Polson in Lake County, and to the west in Sanders County. 

A member-grower's kale seedlings hardening off outdoors

Last week Nicole also met with several more key informants: 1) the agricultural extension director from Salish Kootenai College; 2) a MMFEC employee who specializes in cooperative business development; and 3) both the director and community organizer for the North Missoula Community Development Corporation (NMCDC). 

Member-growers' friendly dairy goats saying hello

NMCDC comes into the study with the move of WMGC headquarters from Arlee in Lake County to North Missoula in Missoula County, scheduled for sometime in 2015. North Missoula remains one of the city's more underserved neighborhoods as it was separated from other parts of the city by fenced-off train tracks for many years. 

Based on a survey of the North Missoula community's needs, NMCDC is working to bring local food, restaurants and cooperative businesses to the area with the establishment of the Burns Street Community Center (BSCC), a renovated freight depot adjacent to a low-income trailer park. 

The Burns Street Community Center

The BSCC houses the Missoula Community Food Co-op and the Burns Street Bistro as well as a community garden. NMCDC will soon lease warehouse space to WMGC in an effort to further their vision of community building through local food. Community-oriented programs at the BSCC include free dinners once every few months and an after-school program for neighborhood children, both of which incorporate local, healthy food. 

NMCDC also plans to help WMGC make their CSA subscriptions more accessible by offering shares at a reduced price or as part of a payment plan instead of requiring a traditional up-front payment. 

Based on interviews with key informants, WMGC is moving to the BSCC for several reasons: 1) they have outgrown their current space due to increasing supply and demand; 2) Missoula represents a more central hub for distribution to both local and extra-local markets throughout Montana; and 3) the current space in Arlee will not comply with new regulations set to come into effect with the FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act.

The majority of member-growers Nicole has interviewed are in favor of the move and feel that it will only increase WMGC's capacity to serve more consumers as well as work with a greater number of growers. However, some did express mild anxiety over the move, and a few mentioned a feeling of loss or sadness over WMGC leaving its rural roots.

A member-grower's vegetable plot overlooking the Flathead River

Despite some mixed feelings, interview respondents don't expect much to change for them as a result of the move since all drop-points for both member-growers and CSA customers will be maintained in the more rural communities to the north and south of Missoula. Several participants also explained that Missoula is itself quite rural and small relative to other cities, resulting in an urban-rural divide that is not as obvious as in other parts of the U.S.  

WMGC was initially selected as the study's main case due to its unique rural location. As such, the move from a rural food desert to a more urban (though still marginal) area will make for an interesting before-after analysis in terms of its effects on producer and consumer groups. 

Gazing out across Salmon Lake in Bonner, MT

More broadly, the move speaks to the viability of food hubs in rural, lower-income communities, particularly in the most sparsely-populated states. 

It begs the questions: Can food hubs stay rural and succeed? Is embracing nearby urban markets necessary to achieving rural development goals? Or can food hubs even bring about positive community change in the first place?

The Main Study: Western Montana Growers Co-op

Nicole arrived in western Montana in late March to begin the main phase of her dissertation research with the Western Montana Growers Cooperative (WMGC). 

WMGC was founded in 2003 with help from the Lake County Community Development Corporation and a USDA Community Food Systems grant. WMGC follows the regional food hub model of aggregating, marketing and distributing local produce for a multitude of growers in the area. Today, WMGC works with around 40 member growers and serves retail, wholesale and institutional markets on both sides of the Continental Divide. 

Source: www.wmgcoop.com

WMGC was selected as the main case for this study for several reasons, most importantly because of its unique location. WMGC is currently headquartered in the very rural Census-Designated Place of Arlee, in Lake County. In addition to its rural location (30 minutes north of Missoula), WMGC is also within the bounds of the Flathead Indian Reservation. These two factors combine to present WMGC with a complex set of geographic, social and economic challenges, but also provide interesting opportunities for community revitalization. 

Entrance sign for the Flathead Indian Reservation on 93 North

Within this context, Nicole is working with WMGC and other local organizations to: 1) measure the level of impact WMGC as a food hub has had in Lake County and surrounding regions since its establishment; and 2) further explore the statistical relationship she found between food hubs and female farmers. 

Based on a mix quantitative data and qualitative data from interviews, Nicole will ultimately evaluate the capacity of food hubs to bring about positive change for a variety of groups, including female farmers, living in lower-access and/or lower-income communities.

Here is a look at what she has been up to over the last few weeks:

A WMGC member-grower feeding his two horses.

So far, Nicole has interviewed 12 WMGC member growers (7 women and 5 men), and two non-member growers (both women) located throughout the Mission Valley. Interviews include four sections, which together cover the respondent's personal background, their experience with WMGC, their perceptions of female farmers and gender equality in agriculture, and their notions of community change and/or development over the last decade. 

Three of the 14 total respondents also act as key informants, meaning they are in official positions to provide specialized knowledge or information on a subject. At this time, key informants include: 1) the general manager of WMGC; 2) the center director of LCCDC's Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center (MMFEC); and 3) an agricultural extension agent for the USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service's (NRCS) office in Lake County. 

A member-grower's hoop house, built with financial aid from USDA-NRCS programs.

In order to include both sides of the local food system, both producers and consumers will be interviewed for the study. However, Nicole decided to focus only on interviewing growers during this round of fieldwork. She will interview consumers, including both WMGC's CSA members as well as non-members, when she returns to Montana in the summer of 2015 during peak market season.  

In the coming week, Nicole is scheduled to speak with more member-growers, along with a tribal agricultural extension agent from the Salish Kootenai College and the director of the North Missoula Community Development Corporation. 

Wild buffalo roaming on the National Bison Range

Check back soon for further updates on Nicole and the project!