At its inception, the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance was simply a potential avenue to help spread the fresh, organic bounty Robin Hoy, the organization’s executive director, was already enjoying as a charter member of the county’s first community supported farm, Anchor Run, in Wrightstown, where she lives. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a relatively simple concept that’s become more widespread over the last couple of decades, as independent farms seek alternative means to survive. A farm sells memberships, which buy weekly shares of the season’s produce. Each member, in addition to paying an annual fee, is required to commit to several hours of labor during the course of the growing season.

Hoy, 59, and a couple of other Anchor Run members decided to see if they could make the CSA model work on a larger scale. So they – in true grassroots fashion – organized a meeting and distributed flyers. They also made a point of inviting as many local organic farmers as they could find. Not a problem. There weren’t many. What they did next was unremarkable in the context, but it would define the alliance’s scope. They asked the farmers, “What can we do to help you?” Their response was equally basic: Give us an audience. Which is what Hoy and company have done since.

Six months later, they launched the Wrightstown Farmers Market with 14 vendors. This summer, there were 35, and the consumers were growing in proportion, Hoy said. The alliance took over a second market in Lower Makefield last year and nurtures five others in Bucks, three of which opened over the last four years. Fostering the sustainability of its own efforts, the alliance partnered with Snipes Farm, in Morrisville, so that it could educate the next generation of consumers. Snipes, which recently became a nonprofit education center, teaches several classes during the school year for Bristol Township elementary school students, both in the classroom and at the farm.

Hoy attempted to establish an education center in an existing building at Anchor Run Farm that would be used as a sort of headquarters for the alliance and a dorm for interns, who would receive a firsthand education on organic farming practices. The plan, Hoy said, “hasn’t totally died yet,” but it has stalled because the township does not have the money necessary to renovate the building to make it habitable.

Making the connection

The last 20 years or so have been a learning experience for Hoy herself, who earned a master’s degree in environmental studies in the late eighties, spurred by what she read on climate change.

Hoy experienced a similar awakening with sustainable agriculture, but it wouldn’t arrive until many years later, assuming all the while that one had nothing to do with the other. The more she grasped the situation, the greater the urgency became in her mind.

“I just felt we really needed to start making the transition, preparing ourselves so that we’re more resilient, so that we protect these farms that are still here, so that we still have a place to grow when there isn’t a truck bringing it from wherever to Genuardi’s or Acme,” Hoy said.Robin Hoy is working to create a sustainable organic food supply in Bucks County.

“Organic” and “sustainable” are terms that rapidly pushed to the forefront of the American mainstream conscious over the last year. The discussions they frame most commonly spin around the freshness and naturalness of such food, as compared to so-called “factory-farmed” produce, where pesticides are typically used, among a number of other questionable cultivation techniques that favor quantity and speed over quality.The bigger picture reveals an alarming relationship between what we eat and where it’s grown. The average piece of produce, according to Hoy, travels 1,500 to arrive at our grocery stores, which explains why, when the cost of gas rose so sharply in 2008, so, too, did the price of much of our fruits and vegetables.

Bridging the divide

The alliance’s progress has been faster and far more pervasive than Hoy ever could have imagined. The goal now, she said, is to keep pace with the growth for the time being.

“I don’t feel like we need more farmers markets now,” Hoy said. “I think we need to do the ones we’re doing better — publicize them better, get more people using them.”
The next significant phase likely won’t come as easily: building a sustainable food supply in Bucks that can be accessed by institutions, schools, restaurants and the region’s disadvantaged.

This is where the growing pains will be felt. We’re a society that expects its food to be cheap and available. To depend more on small, local farms will require at least a greater financial commitment. Those that frequent farmers markets are making the choice to spend more for an assortment of personal reasons — the quality, to support of local growers. Taking the movement to a larger audience will mean getting such produce into the hands of those that can’t afford to make a similar choice.

“It’s definitely a dilemma because we’re dependent on the wealthier population that can afford it,” Hoy said. Hoy expected a long-term strategy for the alliance that would include a plan to grow the food supply to be defined early this year. Some movement on that front was already initiated last year when the alliance began discussing how it could get the surplus from the local farmers markets into the hands of the Bucks County Housing Group, a private nonprofit that works with the local homeless population.

To make organic, sustainable agriculture truly accessible in Bucks, thousands of small shifts, instead of one grand one, likely will need to take root. Backyard gardens. Hoy envisions a day when we retreat to our own plots in the afternoon and peruse rows of produce as we do now at the grocery store, looking for dinner ingredients. In other words, a day when the stakes become irreversibly personal.

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