Building a community around real organic products at a convenience is the image Skarsgard Farms aims to portray as their workers are getting ready to load up Monday’s trucks.
The number 333 is written, underlined and circled, atop the colossal white board in the warehouse, signifying the amount of customers Skarsgard will be delivering to.
Member Support Coordinator Emma Dewey said a lot of people are just shopping at places like Whole Foods, with the intention of buying products labeled as organic. She said people aren’t delving into where their food is coming from and are just trusting the label rather than doing research.
Skarsgard Farms takes the question out of the organic stamp, and is delivered right to the consumer’s front door.
“We want getting natural and organic food to be a convenient thing for people,” Dewey said.
Though the farm has been established as a “Community Supported Agriculture” business, Dewey said that it is hard to distribute local produce to its clientele.
“It works better for us to be more of a regional CSA, providing all organic produce (rather) than trying to stick to this local model and possibly run into situations where people aren’t getting organic produce or things that are working naturally,” Dewey said.
Currently, Skarsgard is picking up produce from across several cities in the southwest. Dewey said the company is picking up organically grown produce in Arizona.
Picking up perishables from Arizona has been made easier due to the company’s recent expansion to Tucson, Arizona. Dewey said the company has been able to “piggy back off of the big truck”.
The warehouse is now able to ship orders to Arizona while picking up citrus, vegetables, and other grocery items to bring back to Duke City, according to Dewey.
“People don’t really realize how difficult it is to grow things year round here in New Mexico but we want to be able to provide people with good organic produce all year,” she said.
Newer farms which have been able to distribute around the city of Albuquerque have advertised that they grow organically, but have not received organic certification.
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Dewey said organic certification is expensive to come by. However, the company has made efforts to work in partnerships with growers that are known to accumulate naturally grown produce but don’t have the financial ability to garner an accreditation.
“Us buying produce from them helps them get to a point where they can afford a certification which kind of helps everybody in the grand scheme of things,” Dewey said.
However, Skarsgard Farms does shop locally for other non-produce items that the company delivers.
“For any of our non-produce items, we’re working with a lot of local dairies. We’ve got Tucumcari Cheese who does the cheese for us,” Dewey said. “We’ve got the New Mexico Tea Company... locally made pasta, and different things of that nature. Most of our other suppliers are going to be local distributors.”
Though the owner was unavailable for comment, Dewey said Monte Skarsgard has been able to grow his company tremendously in the 13 years the farm has existed.
“He really has worked his way from the bottom all the way to the very top. He has worked his butt off to get to where he is,” Dewey said. “He’s definitely had that community feel in mind. It’s just providing a good service to get people’s food out to those who otherwise might not have good access to it.”
Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Liam_CE.
