Learn more about our accelerator tenants
Farm Connex: Home-grown acceleration for Vermont’s agricultural producers
Farm Connex is a delivery service that links farmers and value-added food producers to 500+ market locations. In 2021 food products valuing over $8 million were moved through the service, including ready-to-use local vegetable products prepared by Just Cut, CAE's farm-to-institution program. Farm Connex’s market reach extends well beyond the Hardwick area and the NEK to the Champlain Valley, the Upper Valley, south and central Vermont, and western New Hampshire.
Farm Connex is a business incubator that provides unique acceleration capacity to food producers who have reached the point where self-delivery is no longer sustainable and signing up with a distributor is beyond their capacity. Unlike a distributor relationship, where a producer commits all its inventory, Farm Connex can be used selectively, giving the producer more time and resources to commit to their core business and focus on expanding production.
Getting perishable product to wholesale buyers requires a wealth of technical expertise. Farm Connex provides just the right level of support, ensuring that products are well-managed to maximize the window of resale opportunities. Proper management minimizes food waste that often occurs in transit.
The Farm Connex space in the accelerator also includes root cellar storage, which will allow the Just Cut processing capacity in the neighboring Vermont Food Venture Center to grow by 5% to 10%. Expanded capacity allows the CAE to deepen partnerships with other food hubs to ameliorate structural weaknesses in the food system highlighted by the pandemic: Addison County Relocalization Network, Deep Root Organics, Food Connects, Green Mountain Farm to School, and Myers Produce are some of the partners that can benefit from the CAE’s enhanced aggregation and distribution capacity at the Yellow Barn.
Additional impacts to the regional agricultural economy within five years include 150 jobs created or saved at client farms through increased distribution capacity from Farm Connex and increase processing capacity through Just Cut. In the first year of operation in its Yellow Barn location, Farm Connex anticipates onboarding 10 producers and increasing coordination among the five slaughterhouses it currently serves
Jasper Hill Farm: Logistical support for a continuum of growth
Jasper Hill Farm, who will locate its e-commerce fulfillment operations in the Accelerator, a critical market sector for the company that has grown exponentially since the pandemic. Jasper Hill will also consolidate inventory from multiple locations around the state to consolidate its distribution network (and carbon footprint) by thousands of miles annually. Yellow Barn’s leaner logistical support network will support a continued growth trajectory for the cheesemaker, because the consolidation of inventory will also allow for an increase in soft-rinded cheese production in the neighboring Vermont Food Venture Center. Additional impacts to the regional agricultural economy are the expansion of soft-rinded cheese production capacity by 400,000 lbs. annually and additional purchase of milk by $4.4M lbs. annually.