If you enjoyed a fresh Dole pineapple or banana this year, it’s possible your tasty fruit spent some time in a CoolBot-driven walk-in cooler. Earlier this year, Dole Food Company — one of the top global suppliers of pineapples and bananas — started using the CoolBot for their operations in Honduras. Fun fact: Honduras exported $259.2 million worth of bananas …
How Greenshine Farms Went from Zero to Success in 6 Months
With not much money in the bank and a baby on the way, most people probably wouldn’t decide the timing was perfect to move to a new state and start a farm. But Rand and Alexandra Gifford aren’t most people. Earlier this year, they moved from a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago to a 10-acre property in Marshall, North Carolina, just …
Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation Program Update September 2017: New Opportunities, New Relationships
Every quarter, we publish an update on progress on the Technology Commercialization Grant we received as part of the Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation program. Read on to learn more about how Store It Cold is working to eliminate hunger by reducing food loss. The past three months have been very exciting for our initiatives in Honduras and Guatemala. …
Providing Pasture-Raised, Soy- and GMO-Free Meat is a Family Affair at Botany Bay Farm
How do you provide healthy, nourishing food for 12 kids? Buy a farm and put them all to work! That’s what the Sturtevants did in 2011 when they moved their family from their ¼-acre lot in Vancouver to Brush Prairie, WA, about 20 minutes north of Portland, OR. Today, Botany Bay Farm sits on 34 acres and provides pasture-raised, soy- …
Growing for Market’s Andrew Mefferd on the Innovative Solution That Gave Him Cold Storage and a Skating Pond
If you visit One Drop Farm in Cornville, Maine, look for the hill near the pond. They may seem like natural features of the landscape, but neither were there just a short while ago. On closer inspection, you’ll notice two large tubes sticking out of the hill. It’s a walk-in cooler. And the pond? Read on to find out… Everyone …
10 Ways To Be More Efficient on Your Small Farm
As a small farmer, you know too well that there’s never enough time or money to do all of the things you need to do. So, you need solutions that help you do more with less. Here are 10 tools, systems, and processes to help you be more efficient on your farm. 1. Mechanize Your Planting Chances are you’ve seeded …
FSMA for Farmers: Do the New Food Safety Laws Apply to You?
The Food Safety Modernization Act, aka FSMA [pronounced fizz-ma], is a large piece of legislation aimed at ensuring the safety and security of the U.S. food supply. Most of FSMA focuses on companies that run food processing facilities, like Kraft Heinz and Hershey’s. But some of the rules do affect farmers — in particular, farming operations over a particular size. …
3 Must-Have Tools for a Profitable Small Farm
A lack of profitability is one of the biggest challenges facing small farming operations. Jaclyn Moyer illustrated the problem well in her 2015 Salon article (which was named one of the best essays of the year), “What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can’t Make a Living.” But farmers don’t have to subsist on next to nothing. With the …
How to Select a Commercial Walk-in Cooler for Your Business
Are you a farmer or a florist? Do you run a restaurant or a brewery? If you fall into any of these groups, then you know the value of reliable cold storage. Without it, your business could very well fail. The most common type of cold storage found on farms and in florist shops, restaurants, and breweries is a walk-in …
Slow Tools for Fast Farming: Advice from Adam Lemieux of Johnny’s Seeds
Imagine this: You have 500 seedlings to transplant. How long would it take? Do you have the right tools? Does your back start to hurt just thinking about it? In the past, you might have needed to plant by hand or try and customize large farming equipment — if you could afford it. But, today, with tools like the Paperpot …
