Frustrated area farmers are pushing for changes at the Blue Hill Co-op after the store suddenly stopped ordering local produce during peak growing season.
In May, Amanda Provencher and Paul Schultz, co-owners of King Hill Farm in Penobscot, were surprised to see the co-op had stopped ordering produce. Communication from the co-op had also stopped; emails and phone calls went unanswered.
The couple had to scramble to find other buyers before the food became compost. Not all of it made it to market.
As the lack of orders persisted through May and into June, Schultz and Provencher found they were not alone. Other farms in the area — Four Season Farm in Brooksville, Moonbeam Farm in Blue Hill and Blue-Zee Farm in Penobscot, among others — were experiencing the same thing.
Penobscot Bay Press interviewed four farmers, including Shultz and Provencher. All of them said the timing of the problem, right as they were harvesting food to sell, didn’t just cause undue stress during the busiest time of the year, but dealt an unexpected financial blow to farms already operating on thin margins.
“This year, I’m just talking spring and summer. Our sales are down about 60% That’s without adjusting for inflation. That’s money that we need to pay our employees; that’s a big deal for us. I wouldn’t be making that an issue if it wasn’t an issue for us financially,” Shultz told the co-op’s board of directors at a regular meeting on July 23.
According to general manager Kevin Gadsby, the sudden halt in ordering was the result of staff turnover and disorganization in the nonprofit grocery store’s produce department. Gadsby said produce from Peninsula farms is once again on co-op shelves, but in response to the farmers’ concerns, the store is overhauling the department.
“Ordering and communication with local growers were disrupted for longer than should have happened, and it came right as farms had produce ready to move,” Gadsby said in a statement to Penobscot Bay Press. “We acknowledged this failure with our farming community and have made it a priority to build more sustainable systems going forward. That is the work we are now engaged in.”
What happened and why
Running the produce department the size and scale of the co-op’s produce department is not a simple task. In the past several years, Gadsby said the scale has only increased as produce sales continue to rise. The store has relationships with more than 40 farms and producers in the region, many of which have their own unique ordering systems.
In late May, Gadsby said there was a “leadership change” that left the produce department understaffed as the store prepared for the busiest time of the year. Further complicating the issue was a distinct lack of infrastructure to help new hires, he said. Every person hired, or employee sent over from another department, had no documentation, no procedures to work with.
“What made this different was that there was no succession handoff, and it came at the threshold of our busiest time of year. The department did not have the depth of documented procedures and cross-training to carry it through without one,” Gadsby said.
Small-scale organic farming is no easy feat either. The days are long, the growing season is short and the product is highly perishable.
The Blue Hill Co-op is not King Hill Farm’s only customer — it’s not even the only co-op they sell to, but it is still a major source of revenue.
Schultz said they plan out their beds almost a year in advance. King Hill, like all of the other farms affected by the ordering issue, grows produce that is specifically destined for co-op shelves. Expectations for ordering, Schultz said, are usually based on a combination of verbal agreements, relationships with co-op management and data from previous years’ sales.
When orders dropped, Schultz said it was a challenge to pivot so quickly.
“We’re harvesting stuff and planting stuff with those expectations in mind. So the train has left the station, this is what the season is,” he said.
From the farmers’ perspective, the turnover in the produce department also brought a general lack of communication. When they did communicate with produce department staff, Provencher said it was clear something was wrong.
“Communication, communication, communication,” Provencher said. “There were so many times that all this stuff wouldn’t have been an issue if anybody had communicated with us.”
All through June, as farmers started speaking directly with co-op management, Gadsby said “the scale of the ordering disruption became clear.” On July 9, the owners or representatives of seven Peninsula farms met with the co-op management to air grievances and work out solutions.
About a week later, Gadsby said the co-op hired outside consultants to help make changes to the department.
Provencher and Schultz were glad to see the co-op making changes, but the new personnel brought new challenges. The consultants, faced with the same lack of procedures as their predecessors and unaware of the expectations of the local farmers, initially ordered produce from larger farms in southern Maine.
Growing hope for the future
After Shultz, Provencher and other members of the public voiced their concerns on July 23, the board’s president, Aaron Dority, said the store takes responsibility for what happened.
“My takeaway was that we’ve got some work to do to make sure that we support the farmers, the people in our community that we care deeply about. I think the board hears loud and clear that we collectively dropped the ball here,” Dority said in an interview after the meeting.
“I think we get it,” Dority said. “We want to make sure that the board, the staff that come up, and area farmers can put together a working group to hopefully not just solve the problem, but to make lemonade out of lemons here and make the system better in future years.”
At the meeting, Schultz asked the board to “provide some sort of structure to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Even with the board’s assurances,
Schultz said the clock is ticking on an already short growing season.
“We’re trying to be patient,” Schultz said. “We’re trying to let this process work itself out at the most financially critical time for our farms.”
To Schultz and the other farmers in the room, Gadsby said, “We’re rewriting policy. We’re rewriting ordering guides. The priority is local farms, Peninsula growers. That’s the number one priority.”
In his statement, Gadsby said the near-term changes include documented procedures and more comprehensive staff training.
“We are also working with growers to define what we mean by ‘local’ and ‘peninsula-grown,’ and building a new shelf labeling system to highlight our farming community,” Gadsby said.
For the long term, Gadsby said the co-op plans to have annual working meetings with local farmers.
“We are looking toward deeper collaboration with our local growers for the rest of this season and beyond, and we are planning a grower meeting this fall to plan for the coming season with clear expectations and increased communication,” he said.
Reid Calhoun, co-owner of Moonbeam Farm in Blue Hill, is optimistic about the internal changes at the co-op. Moonbeam is one of the newest farms on the scene. Calhoun and his partner, Nikki Burtis, bought their land in 2024.
Moonbeam Farm was hit financially when the co-op stopped ordering, and Calhoun was one of the farmers at the July meeting with store management. To him, the farmers and the co-op are all in it together.
“I want them to succeed. I think the co-op is an incredible resource,” Calhoun said.
“Small farms play a significant role in making an area climate resilient, and the co-op plays a huge role in supporting small farms,” he added. “I hope they figure it out.”