Urban Farming - Lead by Values

Can you imagine being in a fledgling business where there are tones of competitive products, and prices are dictated by the market and the work level is high. Business theory tells you that in this case you need to stream line, standardize and automate to gain scale economies. But what if you also decided to carry a wide variety of products and operate on small scale? Sounds like 7-11, your prices better be high to make it. But what if competition was so high that you could not influence price that much?

Anita Roddick, the founder of skincare specialty business, “The Body Shop” has some of these issues, but not all. By mixing ingredients at home, Roddick created unique skincare products with a focus on no animal testing and natural ingredients. By focusing on costs, to achieve her goal of ecologically wise products, at competitive prices, Roddick did innovative things like encouraging customers to bring back their empty bottles for refilling which then had the side benefit of reducing waste going to landfills. Her business was acquired by L'Oreal for over US $1 billion in 2006.

Photo: Contributed

Here in Kelowna there is an even better example, Green City Acres run by Curtis Stone, is a wonderful combination of these unlikely business positions. A relatively small operation, with low overhead selling a commodity product, vegetables, which Mr. Stone refuses to distribute past his local market. With local being defined as “Can ride there on a bike in a reasonable amount of time”. His thinking is that to ensure low overheads, they will utilize bicycles with trailers for all transportation, including heavy goods.

This is of course a low operating cost and low fixed cost model but it is also excellent for the environment and the health of the Green City Acres people. To keep costs down they find under or unutilized plots of land, to lease or rent, that are near customers, rather than investing capital in land. This has the side benefits of finding customers easily, and brightening up a neighborhood and encouraging its neighbors to eat fresh products. The neighbors / customers also begin to feel like it is their garden and keep an eye out for it as a free security system for Green City Acres.

With another eye on managing risks of market shifts and crop hazards, counter to the ideas of scale economies, Green City Acres produces a broad product mix. As many as 30 different crops are grown each season. Intensive growing methods are utilized to increase output and revenues.

If that was not enough, it is very telling that Green City Acres is driven by its values when you find out that they are also training other people in their business model, thereby creating some competition for themselves. The view held is that by having more people doing this, they begin to shift society norms and values toward their way of doing things.

By focusing on its values of making a real tangible contribution to the community,  the environment and to social values, Mr. Stone is driven to find ways to make the economics work and succeed. I do not think that you will find the farming equivalent of L’Oreal buying out Mr. Stone anytime soon, but who knows, perhaps one day our norms will shift and we will all be demanding that more of our food is supplied near us and in a manner that is healthy for us and the environment and we will be thrilled to see micro urban farms as common as sidewalks and street lights as well as our other local suppliers and growers.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.