In the USA

A hop over the Pacific Ocean took us to Califiornia and the satrt of the US leg of our tour.  We started at a Farmers Market in Marin County.  There we saw a large and successful market which provides the opportunity for producers and consumers to meet face to face.  It triggered some further tining I have been working through since the March leg of the Nuffield tour.

 That is the role of the realtionship of the consumer with thier food.  Part of this is the relationship of the consumer with the person that grows their food; the farmer.  They have a few bumper stickers which I liked such as"Don't buy your food from a stranger" and 'I know my farmer, I know my food".  The provenance and the story associated with the food that people eat is becoming increasingly more important, especially to high end consumers.  This is where our food needs to be pitched and our marketing should tell that story.  There is an emerging challenge for NZ in this movement because it is also a buy local story too, so we need to think through what that could mean to NZ.

We also met and oyster farmer who is undertaking a bsiness venture with a new type of capital raising process called 'crowd funding'.  In essence it gets the local community to support the venture in a small way to get it off the ground and add to the social capital of the community.  It was a new concept that could have some merit. We ended the day with a visit to  melon farm near Santa Rosa.  A lovely husband and wife team run the family business which has been in the famliy for over 150 years.