By Sheila McCoy of the Morrison County Record - March 16, 2024 This year, Sprout in Little Falls is celebrating 10 years of making a difference in the community and surrounding areas. It is an achievement Co-Founder and Executive Director Arlene Jones is proud of, but one she stresses couldn’t have happened had it not been for the communal support and people she’s worked with over the years. Sprout was founded by a group of women in 2014 who saw the need for a food hub in Central Minnesota. Besides Jones, those women include Janelle Riley, Jessie Borkenhagen, Sharon Wettland, Colette Pohlkamp, Colleen Landkamer, BJ Allen, Stacey Stockdill and the Deb Angulski family. Arlene Jones, co-founder and executive director of Sprout in Little Falls, encourages people to find ways to support their local farmers. Jones said the women were already friends and used their individual skills to make it happen. Wettland, she said, has been opening restaurants throughout her life and has been in the food service business. Allen was in the solar business, but had built her own non-profit organization. Borkenhagen, whose last name is now Bavelli, had been working with Jones on her farm for about five years and had the agricultural production experience and knowledge. She had also been managing the community supported agriculture (CSA) program with Jones on the farm. Stockdill has a PhD in statistics and Pohlkamp was a food service director for the Brainerd School District, which is the largest school district in Central Minnesota, Jones said. “They are the co-founders. They sat at boardroom tables with me for hours and hours and hours, going over data. ‘If we did this, how would we do it? If we did this, how would we do that?’” Jones said. “We started putting numbers on paper and that’s where Janelle came in. Allen did a feasibility study and Sharon gave us all the data on broadline distributors. Colette was the buyer group for seven districts in Central Minnesota, so she knew exactly what every school bought, exactly what the price point was and exactly what was on their menus, because she created them” Jones said Cheryal Hills, the executive director of Region Five Development Commission, joined their adventure. “She had the networks and relationships that were critical, because none of us had them. We were all working in our own little pods and we needed that economic development,” she said. Jones said Hills contacted Carol Anderson, executive director at Morrison County Community Development. A variety of businesses, organizations and entities supported the idea of a food hub and with funding, Sprout soon became a reality. Sprout is located in the former Crestliner building. Back in 2012 and 2013, the building was under-utilized after the boat company closed its plant in Little Falls. “Carol worked really hard as a newly founded non-profit to get us a very minimal long-term lease that allowed us to continue to grow the concept without having to be overwhelmed and underwater by a lease you couldn’t afford when you’re a startup,” Jones said. At the time Sprout moved into the former Crestliner building, two commercial kitchens were installed. At that time, Jones said, there were no shared use licensed kitchens in the area. The significance of a shared use licensed kitchen, she said, is that it allows people to use the kitchen to prepare food products to sell wholesale and be in compliance with Minnesota state laws that govern that. Jones said while people can still make products to sell in their home under a Minnesota cottage food license, those products can only be sold directly to the consumer. Having commercial kitchens also enabled Sprout to host cooking classes, nutritional education, events and more. The name itself — Sprout — Jones said came to her when she was taking a photo of a frog in her greenhouse. Next to the frog was a little sprout growing. While pondering on the name “Sprout,” Jones said it also dawned on her what each letter in the name stands for — Sustainably Produced Regionally On Ur Turf. It was also that same little sprout growing in her greenhouse that inspired the logo for the organization — a sprout, she said. Looking back to the beginning and the need for a organized food hub in the area, Jones said back then growers were working together to fill larger orders. There were also other people in the community who were working on getting buyers to come to table, as “local food” became increasingly popular. Part of that was also understanding that the agricultural community in Central Minnesota is an economic engine, Jones said. “While we have all of the lakes north of us, we have some of the most viable fields here in Morrison and Todd counties,” she said. The mindset back in the years leading up to the establishment of Sprout, Jones said was on figuring out a way to continue to grow food to feed the people in the local areas. That concept also included how to encourage local institutions that serve people, such as hospitals, restaurants and school districts, purchase the food locally. “That consumer attitude of living more locally was kind of the mindset back then and understanding that in working with numerous growers throughout the region, the growers benefit from the work we do,” she said. Over the years, Sprout has worked with more than 200 growers with an average of 60 to 70 growers per year. As the producers then spend much of their revenue locally, it benefits the economy in the area. “The money is spent locally in our communities, whether it’s buying gas, groceries, whatever it is, so supporting agriculture turns out to be one of the ways that we can support our entire local community and that was really why we built the food hub,” Jones said. By supporting the local agricultural economy through the work those at Sprout do, the organization is also not in competition with other local food entities, such as the Purple Carrot or the Farmers’ Market. “We are partners in this work that we support. We all have the same mission and that is keeping our land in agricultural production and helping small family farmers in providing the residents and citizens access to locally grown, nutritious, healthy food, which benefits our health economy, as well,” she said. Jones encourages the communities, cities, townships and regions to support the work of local foods and food hubs, whether it is signing up for CSAs, purchasing for institutions or buying from a grower at the local Farmer’s Market. The importance of local agriculture became even more evident during the pandemic, Jones said. “If we learned one lesson from the pandemic, we learned about supply chain disruptions. We learned that if we don’t spend our money locally in our communities and we don’t work hard to find those opportunities, we’re going to lose the opportunities to do that,” she said. Other ways to support local food hubs, Jones said, is to attend their programming, sign up to volunteer and learn what they do.
Living on a bio-diverse farm, Jones has orchards of plums, apples and currants. She also has 4,500 square feet of high tunnels and about two acres of real crop production. In the past, she had 612 acres of real crop production, but has since downsized significantly as it is difficult to find workers. Nevertheless, she knows first hand the variety of vegetables can be grown. Having been involved with CSAs for nearly 20 years, Jones said during research she found that only about 3% of crops that can be grown in Central Minnesota are available in grocery stores. The seed availability in Central Minnesota, on the other hand, is 97%. “That means you are not going to find a purple carrot in the grocery store, heirloom tomatoes or different varieties of cucumber,” she said. “The average consumer doesn’t have access to that, but we can grow it here in Central Minnesota.” In addition, Jones said, food that is purchased locally is going to have a longer shelf-life as it was harvested within days of it being sold in comparison to having been held for two weeks or so before being delivered to the store. For more information, visit www.sproutmn.com. Comments are closed.
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