It was more like I could not find any in my area who were willing to put any effort in either for fear of upsetting the apple cart of subsidies or because they had generational wealth and didn't care to come out of their canyon to engage with wider society. I talked to mostly ranchers, FWIW.
Of course, without saying too much, its also sort of the nature of folks in this area that they want to see some results before they will entertain. So we'll get the deliveries going and then re-approach.
I'm surprised. You're basically proposing a direct-to-consumer delivery system, right? Whereby your van would collect orders for people and deliver them. If the rancher sold direct to you, they could charge prices closer to what is seen at the grocery market and make a larger profit. I'm interested in this too, I worked in the food industry (production and retail) and I can see food security is our biggest weakness going forward.
That's one end of it. But there's also the issue of barter/trade/payment with cash or other completely privates means with other folks within the "network". That's the part at which people have blanched. The funny thing is this is precisely how a lot of ethnic-based trading networks work. I'm looking at you Chinese Americans. ;)
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