Customers surveyed after the initial phase of the program found that:

68% said that they eat more fruits and vegetables thanks to this program.

71% felt more educated about nutrition and healthy eating.

Here are some more stats on the state of farmers markets in the United States:

In the United States, there are 2.7 farmers markets per 100,000 citizens.

32 States have an active state food policy council.

There are currently 234 active local food policy councils.

There are 212 active food hubs in the United States.

Source:https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/downloads/fruits-vegetables/2018/2018-fruit-vegetable-report-508.pdf

Each day you walk into your office, are you considering what type of culture you are cultivating? Are you and your team of leaders aware that your actions will dictate whether you are cultivating a culture of compliance or a culture of connection, commitment and community?

Daily, you are faced with important decisions, and how you handle those decisions as well as how you interact with your team, will dictate the culture. Your organization’s culture will ultimately determine what kind of experience your customers and clients will have.

If you were placed at the helm of a multimillion-dollar Air Force cargo jet or commercial airliner under stress and other challenges, there would be a necessity for cohesiveness, communication and commitment in order to be the high-performance team required to operate these jets. You already have a great team, but is your team ready to handle their job along with the stress of combat? This is why it is critical to have the right skillsets that will enable you and your team to trust the training, trust the process and trust the people.

To cultivate cohesiveness, connection and commitment in these fast-paced, high-performance teams, there are seven critical skillsets that should be present and encouraged.

1. Professional knowledge

Professional knowledge is critical and is the foundation to any high-performance individual and team. When your people are equipped with the professional knowledge essential to their jobs, it’s easier to empower them and trust them to make decisions when things get challenging. Think about a professional pilot and consider how knowledgeable you want them to be. Would you consider your team trained to have that level of knowledge, to execute their job, when hundreds of lives are on the line?

2. Situational awareness

Situational awareness (SA) is the ability to understand and comprehend environmental elements, events and possible scenarios as it applies to time, space and the collective comprehension of someone’s interpretation. There are multiple types of SA to include individual, team and organizational SA. To make the right decisions at the right time, it is critical that SA is present. SA has been cited as a fundamental tactic to successful decision-making in aviation, healthcare, emergency response and many other high-stress environments. The lack of SA, according to scholarly documents, has been a driving factor in accidents attributed to human error. To keep your operation performing at its best and being positioned for continued improvement, your people need to have collective SA for any threats that might harm the operations. What kind of training has been put in place that helps to cultivate and reinforce this skillset?

3. Assertiveness

Assertiveness is defined as confident, forceful and self-assured behavior. Further, assertiveness is being self-assured and confident without being aggressive. When it is time to make business decisions and the fate of your organization is on the line, like flying a commercial airliner with hundreds of passengers onboard, it is imperative that your people are trained, ready and willing to speak up and assert their voice to avert a disaster. When the success of your organization is on the line, your people need to be empowered to speak up and assert themselves, appropriately, to ensure the operation continues smoothly and, in many cases, for the operation to improve. Can your people trust that the leadership team will be ready to listen and acknowledge when they speak up and assert themselves for the greater good of the organization?

4. Decision-making

Decision-making is the process and action of making choices, especially important choices, by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative possibilities. When you look at decision-making and its application to your environment and how it relates to high-performance teams, you need to be ready and able to make important and significant decisions. Sometimes these decisions will have to be made in very short order, without supervision. To make these time-sensitive decisions, your people will need to be empowered, and know that they are prepared and trusted to make decisions that can be very critical to the operation and success of the organization. Consider what you can do to equip, prepare and empower your people to make the right decision, in a moment’s notice, at the right time.

5. Communication

Communication is defined as the exchange of information or news. When it’s crunch time and critical decisions need to be made, whether in flight at 35,000 feet in the air flying at 600 mph, or when a major deal is on the table for your organization, communication is essential. When it’s time to make decisions, given the time-critical scenario, you want, need and expect your people to communicate. Have your people been empowered and trusted to communicate the critical information at the right time and right place?

6. Leadership

Leadership is defined as the act of leading a group of people or organization. Every organization, especially high-performing organizations, need true and authentic leadership. They need leadership that is effective at all levels of execution. Leadership in your teams and organization must be further defined as the people that influence others to accomplish the team and organizational objectives in a manner that makes the team more cohesive and more committed to each other, the mission at hand and the organization.

7. Adaptability

Adaptability means being able to adjust to new conditions. When your organization or team is moving at the speed of success, it is imperative that members are adaptable. The organization must empower its people to be ready and prepared to adapt to different scenarios. When flying commercial jets across the world, there is likely to be turbulence and weather formations along the route. In order to get to the intended destination safely, the crew must be adaptable to go over, under and around the turbulence and thunderstorms. Being adaptable can only happen when the people have been empowered.

The next time you walk into your office, you should be clear on the culture you are cultivating. These skillsets will support the making of a connected, committed and community-like environment.

The author is a leadership and trust speaker, consultant and certified character coach. As a decorated combat veteran, he brings unique perspectives gained from his battlefield experience to organizations. The author's No Fail Trust™ methodology was crafted from his own harrowing, life-altering experiences, and conveys the importance of cross-generational communication and mutual trust. JasonOHarris.com

From the street, the old strip mall in Arlington, Virginia, gives few clues that something fresh is going on inside. But around back and tucked underneath, the city’s only urban farm has hydroponic agriculture going full swing. Fresh Impact Farms Founder and Owner Ryan Pierce and his team are serving up premium edible flowers, specialty herbs and select greens for the Washington, D.C., area’s most discerning customers — its leading chefs — with an eye toward bigger goals.

From cloud computing to controlled environment farming

Before he found his urban-ag calling in 2016, Pierce had a successful career with a firm that built complex private cloud computing systems for the government. A self-described “geek who loves science and technology, but happens to have a business degree,” he bridged the gap between engineers’ designs and business practicality.

But the time came when cloud computing wasn’t enough. “I know it’s a little cliché,” he says, “but at some point, you have to step back and say what am I doing this for? Ultimately, I wanted to do something bigger that made an impact on more than my bank account.”

Without much direction, Pierce started searching. Issues with the food system, including its geopolitical and environmental impacts, kept drawing him in. “I saw how antiquated it was and how we hadn’t had seeds of change in our food system for a long, long time,” he says.

Eventually, an article on vertical farming surfaced. Though he’d always been interested in growing — and had a little countertop hydro herb garden — he’d never heard of vertical farms. “I was fascinated, and I saw the potential of what it could possibly do if we invested enough time and energy and, frankly, money into it,” he says.

In controlled environment vertical farming, Pierce saw a tech-filled industry ripe for people who understand how technology works — and for those passionate about impacting society and sustainability. He’d found the industry he wanted to be in, but that was the easy part. With no commercial growing experience and no connections to the agricultural world, figuring out how to be in it was the challenge.

Exploring possibilities and proving a concept

Fast-forward to present day and Pierce’s 1,100-square-foot urban farm provides specialty hydroponic products to about 35 restaurants, with 15 key customers among the D.C. area’s top-tier chefs. A direct connection to those discerning palates was essential to his original plan.

Early on, Pierce recognized the influence top chefs have in driving food trends that filter down to consumer markets. “I wanted to find a way to work with what I saw as influencers in our food system, while at the same time working in this new technological field that had so much promise,” he says.

Was that even possible, without raising millions in funding? He wasn’t sure, so he drew on a family-and-friends connection to highly acclaimed D.C.-area chef and restauranteur Robert Wiedmaier, and asked his thoughts on high-quality, hyperlocal, hydroponic food. To Wiedmaier, hydroponic often meant flavorless. He’d need to taste it before he’d say more.

Pierce thrives on chef feedback — not only on varieties to grow, but also on specifics of how those varieties should taste and feel.

“Through the research I’d done, I knew it was possible to make it taste just as good as in the healthiest soils in the world with the right management,” Pierce says. So, he built a small proof-of-concept system in his home’s guest room, with fully controlled humidity and air and water temperatures, and produced more food than he thought possible in a space that size. 

The “light bulb moment” came in December 2016, when Pierce took his first samples to Weidmaier’s flagship restaurant, Marcel’s. “The reception just blew me away,” he says. “That was the moment I knew we were onto something. There’s something that’s possible, and it can be done right here in an urban center.” Figuring out how to scale that “something” came next.

Scaling hydroponic production at a new farm

Once Pierce signed the lease for the strip-mall location, it took a year — thanks to a few hiccups — to gut the space and build it out. The farm’s first sales came in June 2018. Along the way, Pierce has focused on ways to leverage his technology background and data collection to tweak flavor profiles of crops by manipulating growing conditions, with chefs as the final test.

At 1,100 square feet, the space is dense with plants, and data generated by the farm’s technology is abundant. Using LED lights and some rockwool substrate, the farm has 15 different hydroponic systems — some floating raft, some flood and drain — with each system optimized for the crops it grows.

“We’ve segregated our systems so we can hone-in on the best nutrient mixes, light spectrum and temperature for the specific crops that are growing in those systems,” Pierce says. The farm has 25 to 40 varieties in production at any one time, and selections rotate with demand. (Their catalog offers numerous varieties of marigolds, mustards and carnations, plus more than 30 basil varieties.)

Every delivery is a chef feedback session. Hearing “good” isn’t good enough. “We can’t build off that. We want the details,” Pierce says.

Only two systems house single varieties. Most marry four to six varieties that share similar environmental needs. About 80-85% of Fresh Impact produce grows from seed, with the balance propagated via cloning on site — whatever gets the crop to revenue generation fastest. Some crops can take three months to reach that point.

Edible flower assortments are top sellers, as are baby greens just barely past the microgreen stage. Next in line are nasturtiums — flowers, as well as leaves in three sizes — and four popular sorrel varieties.

Inputs are not 100% organic. Pierce balances organic inputs with non-organics that offer greater control for their chef-centered flavor profiles. “But we breed microbes that help maintain essentially a healthy rhizosphere within our hydroponic systems and keep bad bacteria and bad fungi at bay, while making our nutrients more readily available to our crops,” he explains. Beneficial insects manage pest control.

Pierce and his team constantly reconfigure the farm to optimize production and meet new customer demands. He estimates the farm, at optimal production, can handle another 10 to 12 key customers. A phase of expansion and growth is ahead, in preparation for when the current farm maxes out. “We know that if we could produce more, the market demand is there,” he says.

Building relationships on food and feedback

Most Fresh Impact customers came via recommendations passed from chef to chef. Pierce purposefully focuses on the area’s finest restaurants — a choice he says isn’t related to money, but to the chefs and the influence they exert.

“I’m a firm believer that if we can make them into evangelists for this type of technology, we can move it forward that much faster,” Pierce says. To that end, he thrives on chef feedback — not only on varieties to grow, but also on specifics of how those varieties should taste and feel. A request to intensify a petal’s flavor or increase a leaf’s firmness results in chef-and-grower collaborations to yield desired results.

If a chef requests it, Fresh Impact tries to grow it. “It ultimately leads to greater success for our business, but also allows our customers to deliver a better experience for their clientele,” Pierce says. Not every experiment succeeds. In the end, the crop must be economically viable for Fresh Impact, and chefs must be willing to pay the price point it demands.

Fresh Impact delivers twice a week and asks chefs to only order what they’ll use in four days. Everything is delivered plate-ready, at the peak of freshness, so chefs don’t waste labor or food. “We don’t want to see a single thing that leaves our farm get thrown away,” Pierce says.

The farm also delivers in reusable plastic containers — not the simplest or cheapest choice. Chefs accustomed to throw-away clamshells are adjusting. “They can manage and make sure we get them back with just a little bit of effort,” Pierce says. “Ultimately, we can make the supply chain a little more sustainable, one container at a time.”

Every delivery is a chef feedback session. Hearing “good” isn’t good enough. “We can’t build off that. We want the details,” Pierce says. “What was good about it? If we could do something a little better, what was it? The holy grail we’re hunting for is how we can take the constant feedback from chefs and make these crops taste better than anything they’ve ever had and never settle for good enough.”

It goes back to the chef-farmer connection. “We’re continuing to improve and add more value into what they buy from us. We’re not the cheapest farm; our stuff is priced at a premium price point. It’s adding to the ultimate value and the understanding of really high-quality product and the price it should drive,” Pierce says. 

Looking to a farming future

While Pierce is focused on the current farm, he also has bigger dreams. In the future, he hopes to have similar, larger farms in major cities, to eliminate the need for chefs to have products, like those Fresh Impact grows, shipped in. He also hopes to impact the disparities between ultra-high-end restaurants and urban food deserts a few miles down the road. It’s a task he knows takes more than edible flowers and custom-grown specialty herbs.

“That’s something for me personally that I would like to tackle down the road,” he says. “Working with the best of the best to turn them into evangelists for this kind of technology, then ultimately partnering with them to help improve the overall food system and make sure we’re not leaving behind entire sectors of society by just focusing on the upper echelon.” 

Pierce acknowledges his outsider perspective but offers growers this advice: “Know your value. If you’re putting more time and effort into growing a much better product and you’re doing things in a better and more sustainable way, know the value of that product … We have to understand there’s incredible value in high-quality food grown in sustainable ways. Our job as farmers is to communicate that value to the end customers, whether that’s a restaurant or consumers in a grocery store.”

The author is a freelance writer specializing in the horticulture industry and a frequent contributor to GIE Media publications. Reach her at jolene@lovesgarden.com.

North Iowa Fresh was founded last year through a grant proposal aimed at making locally produced food more accessible to the surrounding community. The result is a CSA program made up of 18 different local growers and food producers, covering an area of about 60 miles in the northern rural part of the state. Iowans interested in joining the program called Bounty Box can pay anywhere from $75 to $685 for varying amounts of local food delivered to a pickup location near their home. Items included in the different shipments include various eggplant varieties, cucumbers, tomatoes and different types of leafy greens.

“Connecting local people to the local food market is the goal,” says Andrea Evelsizer, North Iowa Fresh broker. “It’s about giving local producers a different way to sell what they are growing.”

Produce Grower: What has the local reception been to the price points and the concept as a whole?

Andrea Evelsizer: We get all sides of that, depending on people’s readiness for local. The people who are getting the box now recently took a mid-season survey and we generally got extremely good feedback from people saying they are getting a good value for their box and that they are happy with the stuff they are getting for that cost.

Of course, there is a flip side where people do think it’s too expensive and that they can go to the grocery store and buy cheaper. But people who are familiar with the local market and buying from a farmers market are, in most cases, satisfied.

PG: How are producers vetted and deemed to be of the standard you’re looking for?

AE: We work off of a producer’s manual, so all of our products that we are selling have specifications mostly related to standards within the wholesale industry because we are also marketing towards grocery stores and restaurants. We need to be in line with what their expectations are for produce in general. There may be some small blemishes, but it’s pretty strict.

Food safety-wise, our producers are mandated to take food safety training and they are required to comply with record-keeping for things like refrigerator temperatures on their farm, transportation vehicles and cleaning.

PG: Do you think this model is replicable in similar communities around the country?

AE: I do. I think a couple of the biggest things that we’ve done, that are things to keep in mind, are that we have focused on not owning any infrastructure — North Iowa Fresh does not own trucks, the aggregation facility or anything. We rent for the portion of the year that we need them. We contract employees so we are not having employees, so that really limits the overhead of our business. Produce sales have small margins and it’s hard to make it work in a small area where costs are high. The readiness for local is low too, generally. Most people are happy just shopping at the grocery store, as opposed to other cities where local is a bigger trend.