Prospering through a greater role in food
Oregon rancher Connie Hatfield often visits urban grocery stores in her role as co-founder of the Country Natural Beef cooperative. When she tells customers that she is from a ranch family, they inevitably thank her for producing the naturally grown product. “And then, they tell me about their grandpa who used to have a ranch,” she says. “But there aren’t as many of those stories as there used to be.” In the last half century, as food production has become mechanized and centralized, the quantity of food produced by each farmer and rancher has increased dramatically, and the number of farmers and ranchers has declined precipitously.
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Community Vitality is a storytelling publication published since 2000. Send article ideas, questions or requests for past issues to communityvitality@tfff.org.
© 2000-2021 The Ford Family Foundation. Anne Kubisch, President; Mandy Elder, Editor; Megan Monson, Assistant Editor
Perspective changes to hope
I’ve often mentioned to family and friends, and sometimes to our leadership classes, that being the director of the Ford Institute has changed my life. Quite literally it has changed my perception of... Read More
Prospering through a greater role in food
Oregon rancher Connie Hatfield often visits urban grocery stores in her role as co-founder of the Country Natural Beef cooperative. When she tells customers that she is from a ranch family, they... Read More
Research offers insights
The “buy local” food movement is gaining popularity nationwide, and new research is giving people new reasons to buy into it. A recent report on food systems in Lane County, for example, puts an... Read More
A challenging enterprise
When Angela Jones and her parents, Don and Sharon Jones, bought the Dayville Mercantile in 2006, they were pleased to continue a rural tradition. The store has served as the community center for the... Read More
Studies focus on solutions
The townspeople of Leeton, Mo., had been without a grocery store for almost 10 years when a new one finally opened in the largely abandoned downtown district. It wasn’t operated by a grocery chain... Read More
FoodHub helps buyers, sellers find each other
It’s all about making connections, and FoodHub, Oregon’s online matchmaking service between food buyers and food sellers, has been making tasty ones for more than a year. Read More
Gleaners provide a hand up, not a handout
Twice a month, the cavernous warehouse at Linn Benton Food Share fills up with the good-natured chatter of 75 or so hard-working volunteers, gathered there to repackage bulk quantities of donated... Read More
Supporting sustainable agriculture
When Doc and Connie Hatfield first began researching markets for the hormone and antibiotic-free beef raised on their Brothers ranch, it was the late ’80s— a challenging time for ranching. Red meat... Read More
Ranchers reach out to meet their consumers
A big challenge in the early days of the Country Natural Beef cooperative was getting the word out to the public about the availability of the co-op’s natural beef products. The best solution at the... Read More
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