Organic Farming and Distribution in the 21st Century

For Jasper Eiler, it was never about building a multi-million dollar business; he wanted to educate his community about his greatest passion, agroecology—the foundation of organic agriculture. Jasper’s business, Harvest Santa Barbara, transports local fruits and vegetables grown in Santa Barbara to all grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, and many other organizations throughout Santa Barbara and western Los Angeles. Now two-years old, Harvest Santa Barbara has already began to transform the collective consciousness around organic farming.

What inspired you to launch Harvest Santa Barbara?

I intended to be a farmer, but found myself in marketing and sales roles shortly after graduating college. I started interfacing with chefs from San Francisco and Los Angeles that were really into local, organic and fresh produce, and coordinated Farmers’ Markets and community supported agriculture programs.

While studying at U.C. Davis I immersed myself in the education side of agriculture, but found I missed connecting with farms and farmers, so I moved back to Santa Barbara with my family.

I was working with Tom Shepard, selling his organic produce to local schools, but we ran into some roadblocks with timing and farm limitations. That’s when I discovered Farmer Direct Produce Network.

Farmer Direct Produce Network was helping farmers distribute crop excesses to University of California, Santa Barbara (U.C.S.B.), and other local organizations. I joined them in 2011, knowing they wanted to sell their company. I had a personal vision for making local, organic food more accessible to a wide range of people and it meshed with their services and values. A year later, my wife and I bought the company. Since then we’ve reached a wider range of clients like retirement homes, juice companies, and small to mid-sized grocery stores.

You’ve managed to turn your passion into a business.

I have. It makes my work that much more rewarding. It’s easy to go to work knowing that I’m supporting local farmers and supporting my passion. This is, without a doubt, the best job I’ve ever had.

How many farmers and restaurants do you work with?

In the past two years we’ve worked with about 55 farms. We work with about 15–20 farms on a regular basis, and chefs from about 15 local restaurants as well as a few catering companies. What we’ve realized is that many chefs want to interact directly with farmers, and we don’t want to interfere with that, but when it gets challenging or they need help getting their orders in a timely manner, they turn to us.

The benefits here are clear. Harvest SB is making it easier for the community to eat locally-grown food. In a decade, it’s not hard to imagine the entire Santa Barbara County flourishing as a self-sustaining community. But Jasper doesn’t only serve Santa Barbara County.

We’re actually making it to Los Angeles twice a week to a Santa Monica co-op and a few juice companies. My hope is that the food grown in Santa Barbara County can be eaten in Santa Barbara County, but the reality is there’s not quite enough interest yet. There’s been a big shift in the last 5–10 years, but the majority of what’s grown in the County is exported. We’re starting to see more localization with restaurants, but they’re very price sensitive.

Is organic produce more expensive than what can be imported?

Yes, Certified Organic is across the board more expensive. It’s not necessarily a huge leap on some crops, but there’s very cheap conventional produce out there and some of the other distributors have very competitive deals. We generally can’t compete on that level.

Do you guys exclusively transport Certified Organic produce?

We want to, but sometimes the supply of Certified Organic at the price point we need for some of the larger institutions just isn’t available. We’re getting there. It’s amazing how much of a push institutions like U.C.S.B. have made to go Certified Organic, but sometimes with the quantities that they need, they just can’t afford it.

What other challenges do you face as a small business owner besides the price tag of Certified Organic?

Our main challenge is finding committed and flexible clients. We have to work with those who have some core value that attracts them to us, whether it’s believing in local, the principles of true organic agriculture, or wanting to limit fossil fuel use. It’s harder for restaurants—they judge their orders based on how many customers they get on a given day, and then call their distributors at 10 P.M. or 11 P.M. to place their order for the next morning. We need at least a day to aggregate the crop.

Without the proper time allowance, aggregating Certified Organic crops is impossible. Even in a world where you can get almost anything immediately, local, organic farming just doesn’t work that way. Like many small business owners, Jasper is feeling the pressure to adapt and capitalize in an evolving industry, while staying true to his passion for local, organic food.

How has produce distribution changed over the years?

Well, historically a farmer would receive a payment for a year’s worth of food in the middle of winter. That’s the true model of community supported agriculture, where the community invests in their farmers. It’s more of a “socialist” model. Now that idea is getting watered down a bit by the multi-farm box of fruits and veggies aggregated from multiple farms. We actually help companies like that source their food; for better or worse. The multi-farm box is still a good model, it supports the farmer. The fact is that Americans want to be able to sign up for a month and cancel for a week versus a year-long commitment.

So is that “socialist” style of farming dead?

There’s still some farms built on that model; there are some in New England that do pretty well. And it does exist here in Santa Barbara. It’s not dead, but there’s only a micropopulation that’s committed to it. That’s also true of the amount of people in Santa Barbara that go to the Farmers’ Market. Within the county it’s about 1% of people.

Why is it that so few people participate in local Farmers’ Markets?

Perception. A lot of people perceive it as being more expensive, but really it’s just a different way of cooking. It’s like if you bought a bag of potato chips versus buying a bag of potatoes and taking the time to prepare them. There’s so much more caloric value in cooking yourself, but cooking at home takes time and energy. I guess a majority of people prefer the perceived convenience of eating out.

Persuasion through perception is extremely effective, but it’s a challenge. Business owners around the world can relate to this struggle; it’s more commonly known as “becoming a thought leader”. It’s not difficult to describe the benefits of eating Certified Organic produce—most understand that eating healthy is an important part of life, and eating healthy means eating organic. Yet, convincing a community to take the time and spend a bit more money (an arguably not-applicable con) to eat organic is much more complicated than simply listing the pros.

Do you see Harvest SB growing into a much larger business? Is that something you aspire to achieve?

No, I don’t think so. Santa Barbara has one of the best growing climates in the world and I think we can keep building what we’ve started here. In Los Angeles, we have to keep testing the waters with clients. Plus, there’s so much potential here, in Santa Barbara.

Is there enough produce being produced locally to support this area, basically alleviating the need for import?

We have enough agricultural land, for sure. Agriculture is the number one industry in Santa Barbara County—worth over a billion dollars. The top crops are strawberries, avocado, broccoli, lemons and wine grapes. You don’t necessarily eat all those cash crops, so over time we’ll need to diversify. However, that won’t happen if the export model continues. Most of the local farms are set up for export, dedicating huge plots of land to a single crop and that’s why nearly 99% of what’s grown here is exported and 98% of what’s consumed here is imported.

And it’s not just the farms that need to redefine themselves, right? The perception around local and organic needs to change.

Right, the demand has to be there, and people need to pay attention to where their food comes from. We need to change the public perception. Local and organic need to be the norm. There’s some support from the bigger organic farms that are trying to sell locally. Many of the local farmers are seeing that there’s money to be made in local markets. Even if they sell to local stores like Whole Foods or Lazy Acres, it’s a move in the right direction. But I don’t think that the majority of the big farms see it that way; they don’t see the niche.

We need to become a “foodshed”. The concept is that everything produced in our community is used by the community. So for Santa Barbara, our foodshed would contain seafood and all sorts of fruits and veggies. The idea is that everything available here is interconnected and consumed. This isn’t a concept for the world, only for regional communities that can survive off what is naturally available within their proximity. It’s really hard to eat 100% local. It takes effort.

This isn’t going to happen overnight. Jasper’s entrepreneurial dream is a transformation that will most likely take decades, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying. No dream is handed over on a platter with organic produce; they must be fought for. That’s exactly what Harvest SB is doing: fighting to change a small part of the world for the better, all thanks to one man’s personal vision for making local, organic food more accessible to a wide range of people.

Do you have what it takes? Whatever exists in your personal “foodshed”, do you have the guts to eat local and organic and help Jasper bring the collective consciousness around produce into the 21st Century? His business may reside in a little beach town in California, but his mission for a healthier, more sustainable world spans the globe.