LINC Foods builds for a local food future beyond big ag

“LINC is part of a growing nationwide network of local food companies that work with small farmers to help them reach bigger markets. These so-called food hubs allow producers to spend less time marketing and selling at venues like farmers markets and more time growing the food itself. LINC is unusual in that, unlike most food hubs, it is cooperatively owned by the workers who run it and the farmers who grow the produce it sells.

Food hubs like LINC serve as a breakwater against the rising tide that has been threatening — and often drowning — local farmers for five decades. That tide is powered by several factors: food industry consolidation driven by international trade policies, lax enforcement of monopoly protections and federal subsidies that favor big farms at the expense of small growers.”