Santa Barbara County has many small, community-based organizations doing vital food work. Most are deeply rooted in their own communities. Few have the time to track countywide opportunities, state and federal funding, or partnerships across regions. SBCFAN helps connect them. Route 1 Farmers Market is one example.
The program
Farms Together is a statewide project that was funded by the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance grant program to help food banks buy local produce at market rate from local small scale farmers.The state level partners contracted with community based organizations to act as local vendors between the farmers and foodbanks. Route 1 Farmers Market didn’t know the opportunity existed and the state level partners were unaware of Route 1.
What SBCFAN did
SBCFAN made sure Route 1’s work, along with our county’s farmers and communities in urgent need of healthy food access, were supported. We advocated for Route 1 to be considered for a Farms Together contract as the program opened up to smaller organizations. Route 1 believes it got the attention of the California Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) because of the relationship SBCFAN had already built with them.
As Executive Director Shelby Wild put it: “Without SBCFAN, we would never have gotten the Farms Together contract. They were the reason we were even in the room.”
What it made possible
Since the program began, Route 1 has distributed more than 100,000 pounds of produce to over 12,000 residents. All of it was purchased from small local farms with under $1 million in annual gross income. That has put roughly $500,000 into the local agricultural economy. One farm reported earning over $10,000 in a single month. Another, Hijas de las Fresas, raised worker wages and stabilized its staffing.
Farms Together also made Route 1’s free food distributions possible. They reached low-access neighborhoods, churches, clinics, and Vandenberg Space Force Base. During the federal shutdown, Route 1 even delivered food to unpaid federal workers.
Why a connector matters
Santa Barbara County is spread out. A small, placed based organization can’t also keep an eye on Lompoc and coordinate the value chain for the rest of the county. Shelby Wild said it this way: “We’re focused on serving our community—we can’t also be everywhere else in the county. SBCFAN can.”
SBCFAN advocacy also included a larger local-purchasing budget for the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County and the extension of funding by the state after the federal government stopped the grant.
Support the connection
Our work as a coordinator of both our regional food system’s value chain (relationships, convening, trust, advocacy) and “missing middle” infrastructure includes linking our county to funding, partnerships, and policy actions they might never learn about on their own. Your support helps us keep doing it.
