Market Farming

["adriana" <gutierrez-lagatta AT charter.net>]

There is an interesting article about a cooperative marketing orgaqnization
in California called America Fresh which represents a group of growers  in
the San Francisco Bay area.  They have a common web site
http://www.americafresh.com/main.php3?primNavIndex=0&; and centralized
distribution.

http://www.iptv.org/mtom/archivedfeature.cfm?Fid=89

The founder of America Fresh will license his software for $5,000 and
estimates that it takes 15 chefs to make the system profitable..  Of course
these estimates relate to the average purchases of the California
restaurants in question and a much longer growing season than most growers
in the rest of the country, so individual coops would need to run their own
numbers to see if it would work for them.  It requires more than software -
you need a refrigerated truck and distribution facilty and a central order
processing staff.

Adriana