PCC Community Markets award 2022 organic producer grants

PCC Community Markets (PCC), the largest community-owned food market in the U.S. and one of Seattle’s original grocers have awarded $25,000 in Organic Producer Grants to six small-midsized area farms across Washington State.

PCC’s 2022 Organic Producer Grants recipients are Clover Mountain Dairy (Chewelah), Alluvial Farms (Everson), Silva Family Farm (Oak Harbor), Royal Produce Farm (Royal City), Long Hearing Farm (Rockport), and Rent’s Due Ranch (Stanwood).

“We know today that organic production protects local ecosystems, farmworkers, and is healthier for communities,” said Aimee Simpson, PCC Community Markets senior director of advocacy and environmental, social and governance. “That said, we also recognize how labor and cost intensive it can be to achieve and maintain organic certification. That’s why we believe it’s so important to support small farms as well as larger businesses in Washington state with their mission to feed our local communities with organic food.”

PCC first introduced the co-op’s Organic Producer Grants in 2019 to assist local farms with projects such as transitioning a conventional, non-organic farm to organic certification. With funding awarded from this grant, recipients will work on a range of efforts from improving soil health and soil carbon sequestration to improving sustainability, efficiency, effectiveness or performance through the purchase of equipment, tools and facility improvements. In reviewing applications, PCC’s grant committee also looked to benefit historically marginalized or underserved communities and people.

“I was raised in an agricultural family in Mexico and when I moved here and took my first job, I was frustrated by all the chemicals I saw being sprayed on the plants,” said Pablo Silva of Silva Family Farms in Oak Harbor. “We’re so grateful to partner with PCC to ensure we can continue to grow our plants organically with improvements to our small organic farm like the addition of a cultivator to control weeds without the need for plastic mulch – improving our yield by limiting the amount of hand-weeding we need to do.”

More details about the Organic Producer Grant recipients can be found in PCC’s current edition of its bi-monthly publication, Sound Consumer, here.