Rainbow Farmers Cooperative
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Rainbow Farmers Cooperative |
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The
Rainbow Farmer’s Cooperative (RFC)
was established by Growing Power in 1993 to support and train small-scale
farmers
throughout the United States. Our cooperative
is a membership driven marketing and information cooperative that establishes
market opportunities for producers of conventional and organic produce.
The
Rainbow Farmer's Cooperative is a small-scale food producer and sellers cooperative
comprised of rural and urban farmers. Our cooperative represents approximately 300 small family farmers from
Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, and Illinois in the Midwest and Mississippi, Georgia,
Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida in the southeast.
Our
farmers’ produce greens, herbs, fruits, vegetables, eggs, cheese, grass-fed
meats, milk, juice, honey, jam. The cooperative also sells compost,
vermicomposting Videos, and “Milwaukee Black Gold” worm castings.
Let’s Work Together – Providing for our Small FarmersAmerica’s small farms our facing a crisis. The cost of doing business in the United States has forced thousands of family farms to fold. Many of our nations small farms do not have the staff, transportation resources, or proximity to locale to attend farmers markets. In order to alleviate this, the RFC was created to help farmers’ pool their resources in order to get their crops and products to market. Our farmers receive:
1) cash on delivery for their products, which they can immediately invest back into their farms; 2) marketing of individual farms through Growing Power’s web site and word of mouth at multiple markets throughout Illinois and Wisconsin; 3) transportation from farm to RFC’s storage warehouse in Milwaukee; 4) access to restaurants and small-scale wholesalers; and 5) cooler storage space to assure quality control of produce.
These
products are purchased to sell at farmers' markets, directly to restaurants in
Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, as well as for Growing Power's Farm-to-City Market
Basket program.
Trainings
and Assistance
RFC’s
commitment to our farmers takes a holistic approach. Not only does the cooperative purchase the farmer’s goods,
but we also help train our farmers in all levels of sustainable production. RFC and Growing Power, Inc. provides the following to our small-scale farmers:
Additionally,
Growing Power has helped multiple farms receive grant funding. Growing Home, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois is one such organization that
benefited initially from technical assistance with grant writing to get their
organization off the ground. They now are a consistent vender at Chicago’s Green City
Market. Other vendors, such as
Peter Klein of Seedling Fruit and Vicki Westerhoff of Genesis Growers, have also
benefited through wholesale produce sales to RFC. This component helps keep their income stream well-rounded, as well as
economically sustainable.
The
Rainbow Farmer’s Cooperative has given hundreds of small-scale farmers
resources, not only to markets but also to creating a sustainable business model
that will help keep family farms in the family. When you support RFC, you are supporting local farmers, such
as Dick Cates, a Wisconsin cattle farmer, Larry Adams, an urban farmer and
beekeeper who trains ex-offenders in farming, Robert Pierce, a farmer who is
trying to transform Madison’s food system, and the work of Growing Power.
Meet Our Farmers
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Milwaukee Headquarters: 5500 W. Silver Spring Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53218 Tel. 414.527.1546 / Fax 414.527.1908 Chicago Projects Office: 3333 S. Iron Street, Chicago, IL 60608 Tel. 773.376.8882 |
