Program Areas
Interactive Area
Site Information
a community farming cooperative
GROWN Locally - Our Farming Cooperative
GROWN
Locally
Vision & Mission
Our Vision
GROWN Locally’s goal is to find ways in which farmers and consumers alike can succeed, can sustain and be sustained. GROWN Locally products are grown, produced, raised and distributed with the expressed purpose of being eaten by people living in the local area. We, who produce food and other products, and you who eat it come in direct contact, regularly, by mutual choice. Simply put, through this contact, we become friends. We purposefully build lasting relationships which help to ensure the livelihood of our farms and the constant supply of fresh, healthy, nutritious foods for you, the families who receive them.
Growers and consumers in this type of relationship come to realize that each is as important as the other in the relationship, that each has needs that must be met by the other. Farmers get to know and listen to consumers, thereby learning what consumers need and want in their food system. In turn, consumers learn what it takes for farmers to produce their food. The two parties become sensitized to the other’s needs, so that together they can make their food system, their towns, and their rural areas work in ways that sustain them.
By purchasing a Farm Share, ordering products through the GROWN Locally Food Basket or purchasing locally raised foods for an insititution through our Institutional Sales, you help to facilitate these interactions between farmers and consumers. By becoming a shareholder or member, you are not only securing a source for healthy, fresh foods from local farms, but you are doing it in a way which builds a lasting, sustainable source for these foods.
Our Mission
The collaboration of growers and producers who make up the GROWN Locally cooperative, participate in our Northeast Iowa communities by providing fresh, hand tended farm products to families and institutions in our region. Our commitment is to our small, human-scale operations, their diverse characters, and their place and purpose within the communities that surround them. We believe in the intrinsic need for good food, building relationships with others living among us, the importance of quality in our products, and forming connections among all facets of our communities. By following our beliefs, we strive to make a positive contribution to these communities.