“Vote for what you want with your dollars,” encouraged Matthew Kottenstette, co-founder of Farm Runners, a business based in Hotchkiss that transports local food year-round to restaurants and grocers in the Roaring Fork, Crystal, Gunnison and Grand valleys.
Kottenstette and his wife, Emma, came to the North Fork Valley working for small farms and founded Farm Runners in 2015 to help those producers reach customers. The business has since grown every season, he told The Sopris Sun. “We work with almost 80 suppliers on a weekly basis,” now retrieving products from as far as Durango and the San Luis Valley with six trucks, operating three or four at a time. “We work with small-time growers who sell us $100 worth of things, and also much larger.”
For example, Farm Runners has a close relationship with the Valley Roots Hub in Mosca. “We cross purchase from each other,” Kottenstette explained. “We bring them fruit in fruit season; in wintertime they keep us supplied with potatoes, other bulk foods, quinoa, whatnot.”
So, although another farmers’ market season has come and gone, local food, especially stone fruits like pear and apple, storage crops, like potatoes, and dry and canned goods continue to be stocked on the shelves of small grocers like the Redstone General Store and Mana Foods, all year.
Operating under a nonprofit umbrella, Mana Foods prioritizes access to local food as part of its mission. The store came about seven years ago when the Dandelion Market food co-op was dissolved.
“Every year it seems like it gets a little bigger, better and easier,” said store manager Sotantar Anderson. Anderson was raised in the Valley and involved in the creation of Carbondale’s Wednesday farmers’ market. Her spirits are uplifted to see how that market has grown along with the local food movement.
“How much the system has changed is absolutely dramatic,” she said. In 18 years, a single generation, she’s witnessed a shift in the food paradigm. “We stand victorious in the face of something that was broken. It’s really amazing to be a part of it.”
Mana purchases from over 60 vendors, producing everything from eggs and meat to bagels, tortilla chips, tinctures and medicines. “We’re getting to where people can really eat sustainably in their bioregion,” Anderson smiled. “People have seriously made a shift in how they’re buying food.”
“I have to praise Mana Foods for being there,” said Kottenstette. “For general consumers to change their consumption patterns, farmers’ markets are great, but I think you have to have retail grocers that are open daily.”
According to a World Economic Forum report from 2016, the average United States consumer spent only 6.4% of their household income on food, the least of any other country in the world. Of the countries where residents spent the highest percentage of their income on food, four of the top five were in Africa.
“When we spend our money to get something from California or Mexico, we are gaining from the alienation of others, pollution of the world, so many things,” Kottenstette continued. “The best way to mitigate the use of petrochemicals — fossil fuels — is to reinvigorate our local food economy.”
With a diversity of microclimates in Colorado, Farm Runners is able to spread around the goodness of small producers that larger companies won’t work with. Producers that sell to Whole Foods and other large chains are often not small farms with inconsistent supply. “If you really want to support agriculture in your community, I think you have to go to an independent grocer,” Kottenstette restated, also praising farmers’ markets when in season and the direct community-supported agriculture model, where customers have a subscription to receive food from a farm each week.
After moving into a larger space along Highway 133 during COVID, Mana Foods has seen continued success with its busiest month ever this past September, serving over 1,100 customers. Anderson also considers the trips saved by Carbondale customers who may otherwise have commuted to Whole Foods or Natural Grocers “a carbon-neutral accomplishment.” She said, “if you create a neutral, low-impact life, you don’t have to abstract out into such huge concepts.”
Anderson said that Farm Runners is fundamental to the success of Mana Foods. “They make it possible, in one order bringing at least 20 local items to the room,” she affirmed. “Kudos to those people; you can imagine the complexities.”
“We are a transportation company, or logistics company,” Kottenstette confirmed. “It is a lot, working with smaller farms.”
“Supporting farmers is the heart of all of this; it doesn’t stop end-of-October. We’re in here 365 days per year,” Anderson concluded. “We are always accepting volunteers and the volunteers get a discount on food. This helps us with the sheer magnitude of the amount of food we are moving and it helps people keep their food costs down.”
Local food knows no season (sort of)
