Urban Futures Farm

08/21/2025

Moon & planets

08/09/2025

Peach pickin' time.

08/06/2025

Veggie tips!

08/03/2025

Marigold garland. 🌼🏵🌼🏵🌼

07/28/2025

FarmFest 5 in the bag! Thanks everyone!! ( - Mars Garden project)

07/01/2025

Swarm!

06/16/2025

Been noticing empty shelves at the grocery store? Read on to learn the reason why, and the impacts of the shortages on eaters and small farmers.
______________________________

From the Real Organic Project:

You may have noticed that some grocery store shelves across the country were bare this week. This is because a major wholesale distributor for Organic and specialty foods, UNFI (United Natural Foods Inc.), had a cyber security breach and they had to take their ordering systems offline. Not only did this inconvenience a lot of eaters, but some Organic farmers lost a lot of sales.

As the food system continues to consolidate, we know that shocks like this will continue to happen. UNFI controls 11% of national wholesale distribution, but it controls a much greater (undisclosed) share of the distribution of Organic and "natural" foods. Many consider more than 4% of a national market to constitute a monopoly.

UNFI functions as a monopoly in many ways – they set their rules and many farmers simply can’t work with them because they don’t have year-round product in enough quantity.

Farmers have little power over decision making – their UNFI contract requires them to fill orders or else they will be fined. But the contracts don't require the same consistency from UNFI in their purchasing.

UNFI doesn’t care whether the sales are what's best for your farm that week– so if they need two pallets one week and zero the next, that’s tough luck. (If anyone knows how to get cows or tomatoes to stop producing one week and then double their production the next, please let me know!). It's difficult to get a new product accepted by UNFI – they require large amounts of free samples for their customers to trial. Complaints from farmers trying to work with them are many.

In addition, such a big company as UNFI owns a lot of data. Farmers don't know who their product is being sold to and UNFI makes farmers buy back this information if they would like to find out. Plus, so much sales information held by one company is obviously a target for cyber attacks. System fragility and consolidation of wealth and power are the trade offs for the efficiencies of scale.

This week’s podcast is with Kate Mendenhall, Executive Director of Organic Farmers Association, which advocates for federal policies that help Organic farmers. Issues such as antitrust, Organic integrity, transparency, and enforcement are high on the list of policy priorities for Organic farmers. But these priorities are not necessarily the same for the other players in the Organic supply chain. https://m.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=FbE4BYT-0tw

06/07/2025

04/16/2025

https://urbanfuturesfarm.com/2025/04/16/tomatoes-peppers-herbs-and-more/

It’s that time of year – tomato, pepper and herb starts will be available beginning this weekend! While its too early for most people to plant tomatoes and peppers outside (unless you …

04/09/2025

https://urbanfuturesfarm.com/2025/04/08/plant-sale-starts-this-saturday-2/

It’s time to start gardening! Our annual vegetable and herb plant sale starts this Saturday. We will be open Saturdays and Sundays, 9am-2pm, through April and May offering a wide variety of…

04/06/2025

John Prine memorial jam. Good medicine. 🎸🎻

04/06/2025

Instead of farmwork today, we made time for democracy.