{"id":45839,"date":"2021-07-11T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-11T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-food-co-op-sees-success-through-virtual-farmers-market\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:27:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:27:39","slug":"southwest-food-co-op-sees-success-through-virtual-farmers-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/southwest-food-co-op-sees-success-through-virtual-farmers-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest food co-op sees success through virtual farmers market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Zach
Zach Sharon selects produce from the Southwest Farm Fresh Cooperative on Thursday outside a building in Cortez. The building will be used as a new food hub. Southwest Farm Fresh sells food directly to consumers in Cortez and Durango through a subscription model. For an upfront fee, consumers can pick up fresh produce weekly. The farmer-owned co-op is moving into the building that will also house a food pantry and a new food hub.ww<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Local food cooperative Southwest Farm Fresh saw a 70% boost in sales during the economic tumult of 2020 in part because of its new online farmers market.<\/p>\n

The Cortez-based co-op connects customers in Southwest Colorado with food grown by small farms and offers local farmers a place to sell their products. In 2020, sales jumped with the help of the online market and a federal grant. By July 2020, the co-op reached a new milestone: $1 million in all-time sales.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The grant) has helped us in a lot of different ways over the last three years,\u201d said Ole Bye, operations manager for the co-op.<\/p>\n

Southwest Farm Fresh, formed in 2014, is the only multi-farm, farmer-owned distribution system in Western Colorado, Bye said.<\/p>\n

It regularly works with 20 to 25 food producers in Montezuma, La Plata, Dolores and other Southwest Colorado counties. The biggest producer is Adobe House Farm, which operates about 7 cultivated acres near Durango.<\/p>\n

The co-op started distributing organic, high-quality foods in wholesale bulk orders to places like restaurants.<\/p>\n

\u201cProviding a consistent supply to enough restaurants, as many as were needed to keep the doors open, was really challenging,\u201d Bye said.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the co-op received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that doled out $229,000 over three years.<\/p>\n

The grant helped the co-op form a community supported agriculture program. It paid for marketing outreach, supplies, equipment and storage space for food orders.<\/p>\n

The co-op also used the grant to create an online farmers market where customers can place orders for pickup in Cortez, Mancos, Durango, Bayfield, Dolores and Rico.<\/p>\n

The online format was a hit in 2020, the co-op said. Many people were turning to online purchasing and local goods during public health-related closures and lockdowns.<\/p>\n

More producers got involved, and more than 100 customers buy from the market weekly. By 2021, the co-op had $1.3 million in all-time sales.<\/p>\n

Now all orders run through the online farmers market, Bye said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been hugely helpful for us. We previously relied on wholesale orders to restaurants as our primary market, and the grant really allowed us to shift our focus to direct sales,\u201d Bye said. \u201cIt definitely made a difference for our bottom line, and it was a better fit for our farmers, who are small and always dealing with a short growing season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most farmers in Southwest Colorado are once again dealing with extreme or exceptional drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.<\/p>\n

The Jackson Gulch Reservoir, about 5 miles north of Mancos, was about 39% full Friday. In northeast La Plata County, Lemon Reservoir was about 32% full on Friday; Vallecito Reservoir, 59% full, according to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation records.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe drought situation is really critical, and it\u2019s affecting a number of our farms,\u201d Bye said. \u201cThere\u2019s just a kind of general regionwide gloom in the agricultural community. But farmers are also optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Southwest Farm Fresh producers might not have any late-season crops, which means the co-op will have to rely on non-local producers for some items, he said.<\/p>\n

The co-op already pulls some items from Del Norte, the Front Range or even out-of-state producers. However, all produce and meat currently comes from Montezuma County and La Plata County farmers and ranchers, Bye said.<\/p>\n

The co-op\u2019s goal is to keep the market running so it can always be there as an opportunity for local producers. With the completion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, the co-op is officially grant-free and ready to move onward without grant assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little scary, but it\u2019s liberating too,\u201d Bye said. \u201cIt means we don\u2019t have a choice but to survive on our own, and I think that\u2019s good motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

70% in 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,431,28,3270],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-45839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-business-general","tag-headlines","tag-organic-foods"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86655,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45839\/revisions\/86655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45839"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=45839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}