Vibrant farmers’ markets transforming Alaska
Paul Huppert, of Palmer Produce, is one of the largest produce growers and wholesalers from the Mat-Su region. Farmers across the state are working to transform Alaskans’ eating habits.
Photo/Tim Bradner/AJOC
Arthur Keyes is proof that farming has a future in Alaska, and that an enterprising young person can make a good living at it.
Keyes, 40, has been growing and selling vegetables and fruits commercially from his Glacier View Farm near Palmer since 2003. He grows a variety of vegetables and strawberries, most of it on 3 acres.
Keyes is full-time at it and while his wife, Michelle, works in farming elsewhere, the family is does well. Keyes is planning a family vacation to Hawaii this winter.
The business plan is instructive. It’s niche agriculture, with products sold at retail directly to consumers, mostly at the various farmers’ markets around Anchorage. At these booming markets, farmers can command higher prices than local grocery stores can pay.
Keyes sells zucchini at the markets for twice what he can get from local grocery chains.
Customers don’t seem to mind. They’re willing to pay the premium for freshness and superior taste of locally grown vegetables and fruits. Keyes likes getting to know his customers, many of whom have become regulars.
Whatever he can’t sell at the farmers’ markets, Keyes can sell to the grocery chains, which typically buy all the locally grown produce they can get during the summer. Keyes said about 85 percent of his production is now sold at farmers’ markets with the rest sold to local chains. Just a few years ago those percentages were flipped, he said. Keyes sells all he can produce, he said.
“There’s an enormous potential for growth,” Keyes said. “We’re importing 95 percent of the food we eat, and what we grow right here is fresher and better-tasting.”
The competitive advantage is freshness. Vegetables are sold in the farmers’ markets a day after coming out of the ground, where vegetables from the Lower 48 are sometimes two weeks in the supply chain, Keyes said.
New breed of Alaska farmer
Amy Pettit, marketing manager at the Alaska Division of Agriculture, said Keyes is an example of a new breed of Alaska farmers riding the wave of consumer enthusiasm for locally grown foods. The sharp growth of the farmer’s markets in communities is transforming the state’s small agriculture industry, she said.
There are now 33 farmers’ markets operating seasonally around the state, up from 13 in 2005, Pettit said, and more are starting up every year. The markets are well established in Anchorage and Fairbanks but now Sitka, Kodiak, Gustavus and even Bethel have small markets selling locally grown products. Next year Wrangell and Thorne Bay, in Southeast Alaska, will be added to the list.
There is even a small greenhouse in Bethel, Meyer’s Farms, that supplies local consumers and shipped cabbage to Anchorage groceries last winter.
Keyes is driving some of agriculture’s transformation himself, at least in the Anchorage and Palmer areas. Not only does he raise and sell strawberries, zucchini and other produce at farmers’ markets in Anchorage, but he manages most of those as well, leasing spots in parking lots at several retail malls and sub-leasing spots to vendors, including his own Glacier Valley Farm.
His company, South Anchorage Farmers Market LLC, started in 2006 and is owned jointly with Ben VanderWeele, a long-established potato grower in the Mat-Su.
What is happening in Alaska fits the national trend in agriculture, said Danny Consenstein, Alaska director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency.
“This isn’t unique to Alaska. A lot of new, smaller farmers are finding niches and being successful. There’s a lot more consumer interest in knowing where a family’s food is coming from,” Constantine said.
Statistics show that in a typical year, 40,000 large farms go out of business on a national level but they are replaced by 100,000 new, smaller farms, Consenstein said.
Other small market niches are emerging. Several Alaska farms grow and sell sod to landscape firms or directly to customers.
“They are selling to people who want instant lawns,” said Pettit.
Another niche is the market for plants and flowers grown in greenhouses, again mostly small operations. Craige and Kathy Baker, near Palmer, have developed a good plant and flower business at their Gray Owl Farm near Palmer. Kathy works to ensure her perennials will survive the winter, which is something large retail chains which sell plants can’t do as well.
Agriculture small in Alaska
As Alaska industries go, agriculture is small. There are 680 farms operating in the state but more than half are very small. Only 320 farms have incomes greater than $10,000 a year, said the agriculture division’s Pettit.
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture, the total value of all agricultural production in 2010 was $30.7 million, with hay, potatoes and vegetables being the major crops.
Historically, cool weather crops like lettuce and cabbage, as well as potatoes, have been grown in Alaska for local markets, and recently the development of farmers’ markets and improvements in using greenhouses has allowed growers to expand into other vegetables.
Around Delta, east of Fairbanks, the mainstay for farmers is barley and hay, much of it for sale to horse owners in Southcentral and Interior Alaska.
Alaska barley got a black eye in the 1980s, after a failed state-funded experiment to establish a large, export project near Delta. But it wasn’t a total bust. Some barley farmers held on. Pettit said barley production has increased recently, although not up to its historic highs.
Consenstein, at the USDA, said some of the Delta grain farmers are quite successful.
“They grow barley, wheat and oats. They’ve figured out what the in-state market is, and they grow for it,” he said.
Pettit said some Delta farmers are working on ways of adding value to the barley by making a new products. Farmer Bruce Wrigley is experimenting with making barley and wheat flour. Wrigley is discussing possible sales of barley and wheat flour to the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District, which has an interest in improving the nutrition content of school lunches, Pettit said.
Delta grain farmers face challenge that Lower 48 grain farmers don’t — wild bison that range through the area and feed on crops.
There’s also potential for locally grown beef and pork, but the federal government requires meat sold to the public either wholesale or retail be from animals slaughtered in a facility certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Pettit said there are only three of those in the state, one in the Mat-Su, one near Delta and one in Southeast Alaska. The lack of capacity is a constraint, she said. There are some farmers who raise beef cattle for private sales to individuals.
It’s difficult for small Alaska meat producers to compete with large Pacific Northwest suppliers that operate on a mass scale and have large-volume contract arrangements with major grocery retailers that operate in Alaska.
A recent casualty is Triple D farm, Alaska’s last poultry producer, which is shutting down, Pettit said.
Milk producers hanging in there
Milk and is an area where a handful of Alaska producers are hanging in there, but face tough competition, mainly from large grocery chains that own their own dairies and sell their milk in stores at low prices to entice customers to shop.
There are still dairies operating in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and near Delta, although the numbers have dwindled. The Mat-Su dairies sell to Matanuska Creamery, a small operation that started after the state-owned Matanuska Maid dairy was closed. Alaska cows are grass-fed, an enticement for consumers worried about chemical additives to grain-fed cows from large-scale Lower 48 dairies.
Some Alaska agricultural products do compete with Lower 48 companies on price. Paul Huppert and his family own Palmer Produce, one of the largest family-owned farms in the Palmer area. The farm produces lettuce, potatoes, cabbages and carrots on a large scale. Huppert says he can price his products on Lower 48 prices with the freight cost added and be competitive with out-of-state growers, and plus have the advantage of freshness.
Palmer Produce also acts as a wholesaler in selling produce for other farms. Huppert sells in all the large local grocery retailers, and sells those companies have been very supportive of buying locally when they can.
Alaska farming has challenges
Farming in Alaska has special its challenges, mainly the short growing season. This has led Arthur Keyes to do everything he can to make his operation as efficient as possible. When he started, it took two weeks to plant his strawberries, for example, but with the aid of special equipment, he has been able reduce this to three days.
This is important because getting plants like strawberries exposed to the sun early in the short season is crucial.
“One day in the spring is worth two or three days later,” Keyes said.
Keyes has mechanized as much as possible – he has about $100,000 invested in machinery, all of it paid for in cash – and he employs about 12 people seasonally, a mixture of full- and part-time, adults and teenagers. Keye’s Glacier View Farms is small. Keyes and his wife own about 20 acres, a few are devoted to commercial crops.
Keyes is largely self-taught — he didn’t grow up on a farm, nor has he had formal training in agriculture. He was raised in Anchorage, graduated from South Anchorage high school and attended the University of Alaska.
He learned the food business as a produce manager for Carrs supermarket, but had a passion for gardening. His wife, Michelle, has family roots in farming, though, and Keyes got interested in raising and supplying vegetables to his former employers. Eventually the family moved to the Matanuska Valley and Keyes started farming.
It wasn’t easy. Local farmers were helpful with advice but Keyes said it took a while for him to comprehend what he was being told.
“They would tell me things but I didn’t really understand what they were saying until I started doing it myself,” he said.
Keyes has also come to appreciate the complex science behind agriculture.
“Farming is rocket science. It really is,” he said.
Tim Bradner can be reached at tim.bradner@alaskajournal.com.
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