12 CapitalPress.com
April 7, 2017
Co-op requires its member-farmers to follow organic practices
CO-OP from Page 1
On this day, the co-op will
make deliveries to nine loca-
tions, including a downtown
market, several restaurants, a
school district and housing for
the Jesuit priests at Gonzaga
University.
Humble beginnings
Grower standards
LINC Foods requires its
member-farmers to follow or-
ganic practices, although they
don’t have to be certifi ed,
Robinette said.
Any farmer who meets
those requirements can sell
$500 of product through the
co-op without joining — a
sort of trial basis, she said.
Farmers who join pay $100
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
LINC Foods delivery truck driver Kyle Merritt and co-founder Beth Robinette watch as Latah, Wash., farmer Bruce Hogan moves carrots March 14 in the co-op warehouse in Spokane.
Area in
detail
Online
2
http://www.lincfoods.com/
Mont.
Idaho
2
95
Sandpoint
200
Lake
Pend
Oreille
95
Wash.
Idaho
41
Hayden
90
Spokane,
Wash.,
2
home of LINC
Foods co-op
Coeur
d’ Alene
Cheney
28
5
St. Maries
90
LINC Foods
coverage area
Ritzville
195
Wash.
Idaho
23
95
6
3
N
Pullman
26
Snake
R
Robinette said the co-op is
“light-years” ahead of when
she and co-founder Joel Wil-
liamson began it in 2014.
“When we fi rst started, we
were basically meeting farm-
ers behind a hotel, next to the
dumpster, running deliveries
in Joel’s (car) and renting out
a tiny little cooler in the back
of the hotel,” she said.
Today, the co-op has two
delivery trucks and employs
fi ve people.
“We’ve learned a lot,” Rob-
inette said. “In some ways,
it’s like going back to a very
old, traditional way of doing
things and in some ways it’s
like completely reinventing
the wheel and using technolo-
gy to help connect people and
tell the story of where their
food comes from.”
LINC is one of nearly
1,500 co-ops in the nation,
according to the USDA Ru-
ral Development Directory of
Farmer Cooperatives. Of that
total, 74 are in California, 14
are in Idaho, 21 are in Oregon
and 46 are in Washington.
Many, including LINC Foods,
are organized to help small
and medium-sized farms and
ranches build a local customer
base.
LINC Foods has become
a signifi cant outlet for Sprou-
le. He sells 10 percent of his
produce through the co-op,
and may increase that to 15
percent this year, he said.
On March 14, he delivered
beets and microgreens — the
fi rst leaf stage of a vegetable,
typically used for garnish or
specialty foods — for distri-
bution.
Sproule raises 6 acres
of vegetables, primarily for
farmers’ markets.
“A lot of the restaurants
and schools order fairly large
quantities,” Sproule said.
“We’re a fairly large farm, so
it’s nice to be able to move
hundreds of pounds of things
instead of smaller amounts.”
Sproule plans to continue
with the co-op.
“It’s growing steadily —
that’s good for everybody,”
Sproule said.
Hogan is a newcomer,
having only become involved
a few weeks earlier. He’d con-
tacted the co-op several years
ago, looking for an outlet for
his produce. LINC contacted
him when it needed more car-
rots, he said.
“They’ve been willing to
take the larger carrots, which
are slow movers for me,”
Hogan said. “What kills me
is having to throw them out
because they didn’t move. I
hate to put in all that effort to
throw them out.”
iver
per year. The money goes into
an individual capital account
and farmers receive it back,
plus their share of profi ts ac-
cumulated over their time in
the co-op, Robinette said.
Robinette recommends the
book “Wholesale Success,”
by Atina Diffl ey, the hand-
book all the co-op’s farmers
use as a guide for how their
wholesale produce should
look, be graded, sorted and
packed.
“At the beginning, we
didn’t really know anything
about that — even to our ex-
perienced farmers, a lot of
that stuff was kinda new,”
Robinette said. “We got some
weird stuff in some weird
packaging. I’m very thankful
to the customers that stood by
us while we fi gured all of that
out.”
The co-op has several
guilds — one for produce,
referred to informally as the
Veggie Guild; one for live-
stock, the Critter Guild; a
Grain Growers Guild and
a Value-Added Guild. Val-
ue-added products are al-
lowed depending on how
many locally sourced ingredi-
ents they have and where the
non-local ingredients come
from, Robinette said.
Moscow
20 miles
3
Alan Kenaga/
Capital Press
The farms are all within a
250-mile radius of Spokane,
but the vast majority are with-
in a 30-minute drive of the
city, Robinette said.
Both rural and urban farms
participate, she said, enthus-
ing that every co-op member
“has the coolest background”
and “is so different and so
special.”
“We have everything,
from a farmer who’s trying
to start the fi rst tech farm —
he’s built his own walk-in
cooler that has this awesome
space-age interface that auto-
matically adjusts the humid-
ity and temperature based
on what products are in it,”
she said. “We have every-
thing from that to farmers
who don’t use a cell phone or
the internet. We have to call
them on the phone to talk to
them and hope that they’re at
home.”
Members’ politics are
equally diverse.
“We have from the furthest
left-leaning whatever to com-
plete Libertarian — and ev-
erybody gets along,” she said.
“Everybody can come togeth-
er over this common mission
of trying to feed our commu-
nity and support each other.”
Policy calls for ranchers and
WDFW to agree on tactics
WOLF from Page 1
If in place last summer,
WDFW could have initiated
lethal removal seven days
after the first depredation.
Also, WDFW would have
considered shooting wolves
last fall in the Smackout
pack. WDFW documented
one probable and two con-
firmed depredations within
eight days. Under the exist-
ing policy, the pack was still
two confirmed depredations
away from being a candidate
for lethal removal.
In cases in which attacks
are farther apart, four dep-
redations will remain the
threshold, though the win-
dow will be shortened to
10 months from 12 months.
One probable attack could
be counted.
Stevens County Commis-
sioner Don Dashiell, a mem-
ber of the advisory group,
said the new policy improves
the lethal-removal protocol.
But he said it still doesn’t
give WDFW the room to act
as soon as attacks begin.
“I’m not that enthused
because my vision was one
depredation, and we do
something,” he said.
The policy also calls for
ranchers and WDFW to agree
on tactics to prevent and re-
spond to depredations before
using lethal control as a last
resort. Martorello said the
department will not require
ranchers to sign damage-pre-
vention contracts. “It can be a
dialogue,” he said.
Conservation Northwest’s
representative on the advisory
group, Paula Swedeen, said
the changes were sensible.
“It’s at least a conversation
between the (WDFW) confl ict
specialist and the producer,”
she said.
WDFW also pledged to
make more information avail-
able about what it and ranch-
ers are doing to keep wolves
and livestock apart. Swedeen
said the on-the-ground mea-
sures should reassure wolf ad-
vocates. “I think it keeps tem-
peratures down when people
have more of a description,”
she said.
Where food goes
The co-op delivers to cus-
tomers as far north as Sand-
point, Idaho; as far south as
Pullman, Wash.; as far west as
Cheney, Wash., and as far east
as Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Each year the co-op meets
with its main customers to de-
termine the projected demand
for the coming year. The co-
op then distributes the projec-
tions to its members to give
them an idea of what they
should grow.
“We’ve blown through that
every year and then some,”
Robinette said. “That’s real-
ly helped us be able to give
our farmers some certainty to
scale up (production). It can
be a really big investment to
put more land under cultiva-
tion. We want to try and give
farmers a guarantee.”
Gonzaga University is the
biggest customer, though the
co-op also works with other
area universities and is get-
ting into hospital food service
and exploring the possibili-
ty of expanding into nursing
homes.
“A lot of those big institu-
tions, there’s tons of opportu-
nity there, but it just takes a re-
ally long time to get your foot
in the door,” Robinette said.
“Some customers, it’s tak-
en 18 months from when we
started initial conversations to
when we could actually start
to become an approved ven-
dor. It takes a certain amount
of persistence to open some of
those doors.”
Robinette is especially
excited about expanding into
hospitals.
“Hospitals are places for
people to heal and get better,”
she said. “I just know having
access to great produce has to
be helpful to that.”
Spokane restaurants such
as the Blackbird Eatery, Cen-
tral Food and Tomato Street
are all customers.
“We’re always looking for
opportunities like that. Where
can we get local produce or
food into a place where it’s
never really been accessible
before?” Robinette said.
Growing sales
In the co-op’s fi rst year,
it had $30,000 in sales. Last
year, sales blossomed to
$250,000.
“We were very close to
breaking even last year,” Rob-
inette said. “I think we’re go-
ing to have another really big
year of growth.”
The co-op would have
been profi table last year but
purchased equipment for its
barley-malting operation in
nearby Spokane Valley called
Palouse Pint. It supplies malt
barley to micro-breweries.
Washington Gov. Jay Ins-
lee toured the malting facility
in March.
“This is the first malting
facility in Spokane since
Prohibition, and one of two
in the state,” said Tara Lee,
deputy
communications
manager for the governor’s
office. “It provides a unique
opportunity for smaller
farmers to market their crops
in a new way while grow-
ing the craft beer industry in
Washington.”
Robinette believes the
state’s interest was partly
due to the co-op’s work with
barley.
“It’s one thing to take or-
ganic vegetables and sell
them locally. That’s really
cool,” she said. “But to be
able to take what’s normally
a really big commodity crop
— where the farmer has no
connection with the end-user
— (and) actually give those
farmers a way to connect with
the end-user of their product,
I think that piqued their inter-
est.”
Since its founding, LINC
Foods has also received sev-
eral grants to help it become
established and grow.
The Washington State
Department of Agriculture
provided the co-op with a
$138,000 USDA Specialty
Crop Block Grant in 2015 to
start the LINC Foods Safety
Program and help farmers ob-
tain Good Agricultural Prac-
tices certifi cation. The grant
ends in 2018, according to de-
partment public information
offi cer Mike Louisell.
In 2016, LINC Foods re-
ceived $301,261 from the
specialty crop multi-state
program, which promotes col-
laboration with other grow-
er organizations in Eastern
Washington, Northern Idaho
and Western Montana and
food safety training by pro-
viding GAP and Food Safety
Modernization Act education,
resources and technical assis-
tance.
A USDA Value Added
Producers Grant for $250,000
supports malt marketing,
Robinette said.
“The grants are really help-
ful,” she said. “We are using
them to help us grow faster
than we could have otherwise
while building a sustainable
business model.”
What’s next
Much of the co-op’s sales
go to schools, which take the
summer off, so more large
customers are needed in the
summer, Robinette said.
“A couple big institutions
that wanted to purchase from
us year-round would be really
helpful,” she said.
The co-op also started a
Community Supported Agri-
culture-like produce program
to bolster summer sales.
Robinette also wants to
continue to cooperate with
other regional food hubs,
coordinating marketing and
sharing information.
She expects more farmers
to join, although the co-op
must balance giving existing
farmer-owners more opportu-
nities with adding new grow-
ers, she said.
“So far we’ve just so sur-
passed what we’ve been able
to get our hands on,” she said.
“I think that we’ll be adding
more farmers for a while.”
‘People don’t understand the amount of
genetic change that’s already happened
(naturally) over literally centuries’
MONSANTO from Page 1
Asked if the merger will
create redundancies be-
tween the Woodland facili-
ty and Bayer CropScience’s
new vegetable seed lab and
greenhouses in West Sacra-
mento, Purcell said there are
some differences between
the two labs.
Moreover, ag research
facilities in the area already
interact and collaborate be-
cause of their proximity to
the University of Califor-
nia-Davis, he said.
Monsanto is working
with other universities, too.
The company recently en-
tered into an agreement
with the Broad Institute of
the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and Harvard
University to use so-called
CRISPR Cpf1 technology,
which allows researchers
to edit genomes at precise
locations, according to the
institute.
Using the technology,
researchers can edit traits
in corn, soybeans and other
crops and ultimately develop
new varieties years soon-
er than by using traditional
breeding techniques, Mon-
santo vice president of bio-
technology Tom Adams has
said.
“It’s early,” Purcell said
of development and use of
the CRISPR technology. As
for the wider issue of GMOs,
he said it is “one tool” that
growers can use.
“In biotech, GMO is a
great tool,” he said. “You need
all the tools in the tool box.”
He said most people want
good, safe, affordable food,
and there’s room for all
types of production in the
marketplace.
“People don’t under-
stand the amount of genetic
change that’s already hap-
pened (naturally) over liter-
ally centuries,” Purcell said.
At the same time, while
some in the company wish
they could move faster
with advances in genet-
ics, “you have to operate
within society’s norms,” he
said.