Oberlin Project Case Study

In Northeast Ohio the most vulnerable farms, those farms most lost to sprawl and development, are small family farms of 30 – 50 acres. Even with a growing local food movement, those farms find it hard to survive. For many years, the Foundation has supported programs, like City Fresh, that work with small farmers to distribute their produce in Cleveland neighborhoods. While these programs have helped small farms, most remain unable to compete with large industrial farms and remain the most likely farmers to sell their land for development. In the past few years, northeast Ohio’s local food experts have explored different ways to help these small farms compete. One of the most promising ideas is a local food aggregator that would aggregate produce from multiple farms and then distribute the food to an institutional buyer like a local grocery store chain. Aggregation allows for the quantities an institutional buyer needs and the certainty the small farmer needs.
Several years ago the Foundation provided support to Oberlin College to launch a planning effort for the Oberlin Project, an ambitious effort to make the City of Oberlin and all of its institutions carbon neutral. The effort is now well on its way and showing impressive results. Oberlin’s energy supply is now 97% renewable, …show more content…
The kitchen will serve as both an incubator for local food businesses selling value added products like salsa, and as a co-packing facility for institutional buyers. In its co-packing capacity, the kitchen could slice, preserve and package apples in a way that would allow the Oberlin school district to distribute them in student lunches. Oberlin College and the Oberlin school system have committed to buying product from the hub, Heinen’s, a local grocery store chain, has also expressed interest in buying from the hub and in co-packing with the