Create community-based markets and infrastructure to diversify revenue

• Create opportunities to direct market local agricultural products through local branding, farmers markets, inclusion of value added products in local markets, etc.

• Create economic development cooperatives to provide infrastructure for local product processing, delivery, and placement

Case Study: Marketing Programs

PlacerGROWN is a nonprofit, membership organization formed to assist Placer County farmers and ranchers market their produce and farm products. An organizational goal is to bring farmers, ranchers and community members together in order to maintain and enhance the viability of agriculture in Placer County. The PlacerGROWN program has four objectives:

* Develop expanded demand for locally grown and processed foods
* Increase agricultural production profitability and opportunity
* Create and enhance a more sustainable community
* Enhance and increase economic development and stability in Placer County

PlacerGROWN is a nationally recognized cooperative agricultural marketing program that succeeded in creating a regional identity for products grown in Placer County. The program has resulted in the creation of new farmers markets, a new retail market specializing in the sale of locally grown and processed products. As a marketing entity, the program created widespread publicity about Placer County agriculture, an annual Placer Farm Conference, and the state’s first county-funded position focusing on marketing local products regionwide.

Skyrocketing population growth coupled with a housing boom put immense pressure on the agriculture sector of Placer County. For this reason, PlacerGROWN blossomed out of county support to help farmers and ranchers realize better wages, keep their land in production and maintain business profitability. Agriculture in Placer County is responsible for more than $76 million dollars in gross annual sales and represents a significant industry for the county. The marketing and subsequent preservation of agriculture instills qualities that make Placer special: its rural character, beautiful scenery and working family farms.

Joanne Neft, Director of Agricultural Marketing for Placer County, attributes the success of the program to the policies that created it along with the growers and ranchers who help support and promote it. Active and continuous political support remains key to the campaign. Placer County used El Dorado County’s marketing campaign for Apple Hill as an example. Focus on a product people know and make them want more. Starting with only seven growers in 1993, Placer County now boasts 53 mandarin orchards, making a healthy profit. Patience, investment, publicity and profitability take time to cultivate, but they can pay off in the long run.

Neft and the PlacerGROWN program also extend their reach into the planning arena. Placer County adopted farm stay guidelines as a tool for working farms and ranches to diversify their businesses. With an informed and willing planning department supporting them, PlacerGROWN helped shape and write the guidelines for farm stay operations. Farm stays help expand the understanding of agriculture in Placer County, provide farmers and ranchers with an opportunity to diversify income and boost agriculture-based tourism. Farm stays have more regulated guidelines than hotels or bed and breakfasts, but provide needed diversification to the agricultural sector.

Modeled upon PlacerGROWN, Calaveras County created its own countywide marketing and education program in 1999. CalaverasGROWN produces a farm trail map that easily identifies where members are located and what they are growing. The program branded itself with a frog logo, owing its creation to Mark Twain’s short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” The logo appears on county grown products, so consumers can readily identify local items and support local businesses.

With assistance from the University of California Cooperative Extension, Amador County established its own agricultural marketing program, Farms of Amador, in 2002 and Tuolumne County launched its marketing program, Farms of Tuolumne, in 2006. The El Dorado County Farm Trails marketing association is also membership-based. Community members and farmers in Nevada County have recently formed the Local Food Coalition to support and market local agriculture.