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The Hungry Locavore on Facebook
The Hungry Locavore on Instagram
Transcription
David Fair: This is 89.1 WEMU, and let's talk about our local agricultural and business community. I'm David Fair, and welcome to Issues of the Environment. There is a growing local food network, and, among other things, it can contribute to the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help in the effort toward carbon neutrality. There are other factors considered too--addressing and bolstering the local economy among them. Our guest today is a farmer. And Ryan Poe is also the founder of The Hungry Locavore. Now, it's working to better connect the community with local sources of fresh and wholesome foods as it says. Thank you so much for the time today, Ryan! I appreciate it!
Ryan Poe: Thank you, David! And thank you for having me on the show! What an honor! And just happy to be here!
David Fair: Well, we're going to talk about a hyper-local food system and how it works in our area, but I noticed you're not native to the area. You grew up on a farm in Northern California. How'd you end up in Washtenaw County?
Ryan Poe: Yeah. So, I grew up on a farm in Northern California, more of a polyculture-style farm with livestock, fruit trees, nut trees, berries, row crops, annuals, perennials. And I went to school at San Diego State. Like any young man, I moved away from the farm at about 19. And during that time down in San Diego, I joined the coral reef industry, and I spent about 15 years growing corals for the aquatic trade. And my wife and I basically got offered an opportunity to move out to Michigan about 12 years ago. And then, shortly thereafter, I joined the farming community roughly 10 years ago to date.
David Fair: When you arrived here, did you find a similar sense of agricultural community as perhaps you would experience growing up on a farm in Northern California?
Ryan Poe: You know, I definitely did. I did some research, and I could see that Michigan was the second number one producer of diversified crops out of the 48 connected states. And it just seemed like a real good fit. After being a stay-at-home dad for the first couple of years of living here with both my daughters, I joined a farm right across the street from the Montessori school they attended. And from there, the last 10 years has just been a wild ride as all sorts of collaborations with local farms and restaurants and supporting local food systems.
David Fair: Well, collaboration is something that you consider yourself an expert at. How do you describe the mission of, what is now, The Hungry Locavore?
Ryan Poe: So, our mission statement is to build community through local food systems and also tell people's stories through really informative and educational newsletters. And it's all about diversity, resilience, equity. It's not about me. It's about we and how we all share basic commerce with local food systems through seasonality. That's what we really try to highlight is telling people stories and basically just engaging as many sustainable, plant forward-based menus that we can.
David Fair: Well, after some starts and stops with other enterprises along the way, you founded The Hungry Locavore in September of 2023. Did you find, initially anyway, it was hard getting buy-in from the local farmers and some of the restaurants, chefs and artisans?
Ryan Poe: You know, with doing the coral reef industry, it took me to probably more than 50 different countries. Obviously, a lot of language barriers there, working in-country and experience in the food culture. My grandma was also a professional chef, so I kind of have a little bit of background being in the chef world to kind of open those doors to get chefs to be more receptive. The concept is basically buying food from them for the boxes with the farms. Being a farmer and being able to speak the language and know the lay of the land, that was actually a lot easier for me to get involved with other farmers. For them, it was a pretty low-risk investment because we're marketing and advertising them and basically trying to drive traffic to both the farms and the restaurants. But the buy-in side of it is, actually, people see it and they usually just ask how can we start or jump onto a menu.
David Fair: Our Issues of the Environment conversation with Ryan Poe continues on 89.1 WEMU. Ryan is a farmer and founder of The Hungry Locavore. You know, some of probably heard of CSA, or Community-Supported Agriculture. It's pretty common across the country. The CSAA, or Community-Shared Agriculture and Artisans, that's more of an accurate description of The Hungry Locavore. What difference does that CSAA model make for your customers?
Ryan Poe: Yeah. So, the general gist of the menus is they come out every Sunday. They're active for purchase for anybody in the community. Every menu is at will, so you can opt in week by week on a what-you-see-is-what-you-get menu to engage the systems of local food without long-term commitment. And then, with adding the extra "A" on the end with artisanal goods. We feature all kinds of different things outside of food sometimes. Like, on Earth Day, we've done glass straws or packages of seeds or potted plants, just for an additional experience to other local brands and mom-and-pop businesses that are in the area. We also feature bread, legumes, all sorts of dried fruits, pretty much anything and everything that is somewhat related to the natural world or food systems.
David Fair: What kind of variety of boxes could I get through the course of several months or a year?
Ryan Poe: Yeah. So, each week, we curate a different menu with different farmers and different chefs, six to eight produce items, three or four prepared foods. All the menus are themed, so we kind of take you on culinary adventures around the planet, but all the food actually comes from Southeast Michigan. So, like this past week, we just ran a menu Italian-themed. We had all kinds of prepared Italian food dishes on there, a bar of soap, and then some seasonal vegetables, like ramps and asparagus and things like that. Next week, we're probably going to do more of a Mediterranean menu. We do Southeast Asian. We pretty much just do whatever calls to us, and we try to pair up different businesses and farms, so the menu kind of has some parallels there. So, it all makes sense, and it's congruent to that region of the world.
David Fair: And it's about what $65 to $85 on average per box?
Ryan Poe: Yeah. We generally hover around $75, give or take. With the inflation and prices going up, obviously, we try to keep it within reason, but we do shop around the big box stores. We definitely consistently are giving 20% more for 20% less, and it's also obviously local food. And then, we're telling other people's stories and driving traffic to those businesses, so it's an all-around, feel good narrative.
David Fair: This is WEMU's Issues of the Environment. And today, we're talking with farmer and Hungry Locavore founder Ryan Poe. How exactly do you anticipate that creating such a local food system will help reduce carbon emissions and better protect the ecology and environment in our community?
Ryan Poe: So, one thing is I do work with all the chefs on a firsthand basis, even in the kitchens, watching them make the meals. I also am kind of like a butterfly that pollinates many flowers, and our portfolio is very public. So, a lot of the information is being traded behind the scenes, meaning from farm to farm on different paths or crop rotations or ecological benefits. But that also translates to the chefs as well. There's a lot more drive for chefs in our area here now to try to get in and support local farms. So, those are huge core values to us to drive down the greenhouse gas emissions. We've currently entered a six-continent food supply chain, and all of that packaging and fossil fuel miles is hugely disruptive to the natural ecology of the world. So, we're really trying to emphasize to draw down and reduce, reuse, eliminate one-time use plastic and also try to be mindful of how the prepared food is packed with compostable things that can go to the landfill without creating more greenhouse gasses.
David Fair: You're three years in now. What is the goal moving forward in both improving the health of the environment, our local food system and potentially the local economy?
Ryan Poe: Yeah. So, I mean, we're always actively looking for new farms and new restaurants, and we seem to be featuring them quite regularly. I've always been an organic, no-till farmer, so that is kind of my method with the business as well. We're pretty quiet. We're not huge on Instagram or Facebook or social media, so a lot of our project is word-of-mouth. And I think that actually speaks to us. This is not a short-term project. This is long-term, incremental gains and just really telling the culture and the stories of the people that participate in the project. With the new farming adventure, Pierre de Lise, being the farm manager over there, now we have a farm crew that's built around us, and we're actually targeting more crops that we can't already find in the marketplace to grow on this farm. So, that will help diversify the portfolio even farther.
David Fair: Are you looking to establish a facility of your own in the future?
Ryan Poe: We did join Zingerman's about a year-and-a-half ago. Ari, one of the founders, started to buy the box from us, and we basically had some conversations and, long story short, they asked us to meet the business there. We are packing out of Zingerman's down by the airport in Ann Arbor. And really, the long-term goal with The Hungry Locavore, we're just trying to elevate the boxes, roughly to 75 to 100 boxes per week. Also, that kind of puts a good feeling on most of the prepared feed vendors that can handle those size orders, as well as the scale of the farms out here.
David Fair: Well, there is one thing for certain, and it is that the passion for what you're doing comes through in the conversation and I'm sure in each box that you send out for pickup. Thank you so much for the conversation today! I love learning about it, and I love the opportunity to see where it goes in the years ahead! Thank you, Ryan!
Ryan Poe: Grateful for the opportunity! I really love the show and everything that it speaks to! And it's a proud moment for me to put this feather in my cap! And thanks again for having me!
David Fair: That is Ryan Poe. He is a farmer and founder of The Hungry Locavore. And if you'd like more information and links to Ryan and his work, simply stop by our website at WEMU.org. We'll get you where you're going. Issues of the Environment is brought to you each Wednesday, and it's produced in partnership with the Office of the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU Ypsilanti.
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