“Rather than the chocolate drive, if you can do fund-raising from fresh vegetables, that’s preferable”
A chance meeting with a spud grower started Alasdair Moodie and Karen Vincent on the path to FarmGate Online. They spoke to CASEY NEILL about the Cannons Creek program’s value to farmers and buyers.
The FarmGate Online concept started with a visit to Grantville Market during the 2015 third term school holidays.
“We met a potato farmer selling spuds off the back of his truck because the supermarkets were giving him about 25 cents a kilo and it was costing him 45 cents a kilo to grow them,” co-founder Karen Vincent said.
Partner Alasdair Moodie said: “He’d actually ploughed in 200 tonnes the day before.”
Karen said they “got morally quite outraged” and bought seven kilograms of spuds between them.
“I put something up on a couple of the Facebook groups that I belong to. People said ‘we’ll buy potatoes’,” she said.
“We didn’t even know what the guy’s name was.”
They contacted the market but he wasn’t a regular, so they started cold-calling potato farmers in Thorpdale and Trafalgar and found him – and went and bought 350kg of potatoes.
“We sold them in two days on Facebook and ended up with a lot of likes,” Alasdair said.
“People said ‘what else do you do?’.
“From there it’s started to grow.”
FarmGate Online started actively in June last year, operating from Cannons Creek.
Alasdair is a software project manager and Karen is a musician.
“We’re heading towards 100 boxes a week at the moment,” Alasdair said.
The range has expanded from fresh fruit and vegies to now include Australian chocolate made in Queensland and they are now talking to meat producers and milk supplier Gippsland Jersey.
“It’s growing quite rapidly,” Alasdair said.
“We’ve found a lot of interest in Gippsland.”
Karen said FarmGate Online produce came directly from the farm and into the box, sometimes landing in a buyer’s fridge within 24 hours of being picked.
“There’s no sitting on a shelf or sitting in a cool room for months,” she said.
“Customers say the produce can last two weeks.”
Buyers order online “and once we know what everyone wants we order all the produce in, get it from the farmers, box it all up.
“Then it’s distributed out to schools.”
Any charity, school or business can set up as a farm gate. It then earns 10 per cent of the produce sales.
“Every year it works out quite nicely for the schools,” Alasdair said.
They’re in discussions with the East Gippsland Food Cluster, the Cardinia Food Movement and the City of Casey.
“I think the councils are aware of the health implications long-term,” Alasdair said.
“It’s getting fresh produce into schools.
“Rather than the chocolate drive, if you can do fund-raising from fresh vegetables, that’s preferable.”
He said that in Casey, something like 82 per cent of people were living technically in a food desert, because they weren’t within 400 metres of essential food services.
“We’re very interested in establishing a better food distribution model,” he said.
“We’ve been chatting to Sustain – one of the driving forces behind all of this.
“Many of the councils are just struggling with how to make it work.”
Karen said: “Establishing culture is one thing, but changing a habit is totally different.”
Alasdair agreed.
“It’s convenience culture,” he said.
FarmGate sells standard and customised boxes.
“We have a family essentials box. We did that in collaboration with our members,” Karen said.
“It’s got larger quantities of more basic sorts of things like potatoes and carrots and apples and bananas – things families usually go through in volume.
“Customers asked us to put in celery, cabbage, zucchini and broccoli.
“We also just do standard mixed boxes, which are a bit more varied.
“Those boxes we tend to get a bit more experimental with, adding things people might not have actually tried before.”
Karen said they consult a dietician when compiling their boxes and she writes for a blog for the FarmGate Online website about how to use some of the more unusual vegetables.
“Our boxes can either be fully organic or they can be just standard produce,” she said.
“Our standard boxes, they often have quite a bit of organic produce in them as well.”
Alasdair said: “Often we find it’s a myth that organic produce is much more expensive.”
“We were buying organic bananas at less than the standard product.
“That was at about $2 a kilo. The supermarkets were still charging $9 a kilogram for organic bananas.
“It’s just gouging.”
Karen said the family essentials box was $45, the organic version was $55.
“The smallest box that we do is a $30 box,” she said.
“We’ve removed some of those cheaper ones because the cost of putting it together is the same as the big box, you just don’t get to put as much in it.
“It’s probably enough for a couple.”
The farmer being treated fairly is another factor, Karen said.
“The farmer says ‘this is how much it is’ and we say ‘that’s fine’,” she said.
“Their margins are so tight that we’re not going to be squeezing them for margins.”
Alasdair said: “At the moment we’re just trying to work out delivery zones.
“We’re at capacity for Gippsland with one day a week.
“It’s 950km a day in driving.
“We actually have to do two runs in the refrigerated van to make it work.
“Out to Inverloch is our range at the moment.
“We’re looking to expand into Gippsland and into the western side of Victoria.”
He said FarmGate Online was a viable for-profit social enterprise, “it’s a question of getting it to scale”.
“From our own home deliveries and our own direct sales from our farm gate, we put 10 per cent into the National Breast Cancer Foundation,” he said.
“Make a comfortable living – that’s what we’re aiming for.”
Karen said: “The giving back part’s pretty important.”
They employ a couple of casual workers.
“We’re doing our best to get casuals in from predominantly long-term unemployed,” Alasdair said.
“Hopefully in the next 12 months we’ll employ more.”
Karen said: “We can’t do it all on our own anymore.”
She said they’d had interest from Bendigo, Sydney and Canberra.
“Schools have heard about what we do,” she said.
Alasdair said: “If we can develop networks with other growers in different areas there’s no reason why we can’t expand it further.
“There’s a lot of competition in that supermarket sector but that quality issue remains the same.
“People are interested in fresh and local.”
