What’s the fastest, most efficient route from farm to table?
Mendocino Works, our new show about the nurture of community startups, explores the Mendo Lake Food Hub, an innovative shared distribution network featuring distributed cold storage nodes where farmers can drop produce off for onward distribution rather than delivering directly to customers.
Food Hub manager Caroline Radice spoke with us about the farms, stores and restaurants that are making this hub spin.
Listen to the 12 July interview here.
Caroline Radice has been working professionally in food and farming for over fifteen years, with a love local food inspired by childhood memories of berry-picking at u-pick farms and eating fresh vegetables from the family garden in Ithaca, NY. Caroline and her partner, Jason Pluck, run Black Dog Farm & Catering, a local food catering business, as well as serving on the board of the Good Farm Fund. Most recently, she signed on as the Manager of the MendoLake Food Hub, continuing her work supporting the growth of local food farms and the availability of fresh local produce for residents of our community.
The MendoLake Food Hub
The mission of the Food Hub is to increase the economic viability of local specialty crop farms and to increase the availability of fresh produce in Mendocino & Lake County. The Food Hub accomplishes this through a shared distribution network and a series of refrigerated cold storage nodes – instead of one farmer driving small amounts of produce long distances, farmers drop off produce at the nearest node, where one truck picks up from everyone and makes the deliveries.
Mendocino County Public Broadcasting
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