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Vermont tries to match up farmers with food buyersMONTPELIER, Vt. (AP)--Vegetable grower Joe Buley, hoping to improve his life, has turned to a matchmaker. Not for his love life--for his veggies. He's signed up for a "Matchmaker" event in which farmers will be placed together for 10 minutes at a time with buyers from supermarket chains, restaurants, food cooperatives and colleges in hopes of forging new partnerships benefiting growers and retailers. "It's an excellent opportunity for me to look at some new markets," said Buley, of East Montpelier, who's hoping his baby bell peppers and winter greens get snapped up. The event was organized by the state Agency of Agriculture to help link sellers of local products with buyers that didn't know how to find them, said Helen Labun Jordan, the agency's agricultural development coordinator. The reasons were obvious: Farmers wanted to sell their products wholesale to a large supermarket but didn't know how to get their foot in the door. And restaurants using a core group of farmers didn't know what else was out there, she said. They needed an efficient way to exchange information, hence the Matchmaker. Organized like a speed dating event, the farmers will get 10 minutes each with individual buyers, to pitch what they grow and hear the needs of vendors like Shaw's and Hannaford Bros. supermarkets, food cooperatives and colleges. "This is your chance to explore options for selling to larger scale buyers through one-on-one conversations that you schedule based on who you want to connect with," the Agency of Agriculture said on its website. "The Matchmaker is an event for anyone planning to expand to larger markets, anyone currently selling wholesale who wants to expand their clients, and anyone with surpluses who wants to learn where large quantities can be sold." The daylong event will include workshops on distribution options, systems for tracking sales and preseason planning. The event will help to answer questions about what products farmers have, if they use a distributor or sell their products directly. For sellers, they'll learn what quantities are needed, where, and in what form, said Jim Harrison, president of the Vermont Grocers' Association. Sometimes, growers think Hannaford's is too big to work with small growers, said Wendy Ward, Hannaford's "Close to Home" coordinator. "Unlike some of our competitors, we don't have minimum-volume requirements when they're doing direct store delivery, which is what most of our growers do," said Ward. "Some of our stores can accommodate a very small grower with just a few cases each week. We have other larger growers who do dozens of cases of every item." Charlie Sargent, dining services purchasing agent for Middlebury College, is looking for locally raised oats for the school's homemade granola. The college now buys artisan cheeses, milk, ice cream, apples, and other produce from Vermont farms and is open to buying more. "We're always looking to see what else we can buy with our dollar that is local. We realize how important the college is to the local economy," said Sargent. Buley, who owns Screamin' Ridge Farm, said he's impressed with the event's lineup. "What I'm seeing is it's an awful lot of direct vending straight to the actual customers, which is excellent," he said. 11/3/08 Date: 10/30/08
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