Newtopia Now demonstrates Colorado brands’ connections to Colorado farmers

In a cluster of folding tables in the Regenerate neighborhood at Newtopia Now, Danielle Trotta sits among the brand holders she describes as both characters and storytellers in a tale that connects consumers to the rural communities of Colorado.

The project manager of the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Colorado Proud program says the brands not only work with the farmers, creating premium-price revenue streams crucial to rural economies, they also remind consumers how important those farmers and their stories are. “I don't think a lot of people know what's going on when they're in the grocery store, but that's where we really depend on the brands to be able to tell that story,” Trotta says, “because people are interested.”

But it’s not only the consumer standing in the organic section at Natural Grocers who need to hear the story, Trotta says. The farmers in the communities her program works with are an equally important audience. The relationship between natural products brands and farmers may be fundamental but for farmers who have not been brought into that relationship, uncertainties abound.  “It's scary for some rural communities and farmers and ranchers to get involved in that, because they're not sure that it (demand from young brands) will stay steady, or it's more work to get into those markets, but it pays off in the end, because once they find those markets, it really opens the door to many others.”

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For all that to happen, however, Trotta says the brands need to succeed. It’s why the Colorado Department of Agriculture created the cluster of tables at Newtopia Now, a smaller show perfect for smaller brands. “I think it’s actually good for our producers and brands, because it gives them a little more visibility,” she says, reflecting that in a show of the scale of Natural Products Expo West, a smaller brand might get “lost in the sauce.”

A dozen feet from where Trotta sits, Claudia Bouvier is happy to be a storyteller. She stands in front of a table stacked with boxes of her Boulder brand’s Pastaficio noodles, made with wheat from farms in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and talks about how her brand “bridges the story” of the farmers.

“For the farmers to grow, they need more scale, and if they are just selling locally, there's only so much that they can grow,” Bouvier says, explaining that her brand is “the bridge” to markets the farmers could never reach on their own. “We're growing a community that is not only in the San Luis Valley. It's coming to Denver. It's coming to Boulder, and we are hoping that it can be even bigger with our pasta going to different states.”

For farmers like Sarah Jones, who grows some of the wheat Bouvier puts into her noodles, that brand relationship is crucial. She’s not waiting on brands to tell her stories. She using the brands to tell her story. “When I'm at events, I bring a display of all of the products that our small family farm is sourcing to. I bring 10 different things, right? A bottle of whiskey from here, a bag of flour from here, pasta from here,” Jones says, explaining that rural communities hours from cities can’t sell into urban farmers markets. “We can't have a farm stand and sell potatoes for $10 a pound like in Boulder.”

But for Jones, the storytelling that brands need to do and that she thinks Trotta’s Colorado Proud program set out to accomplish, can’t end at pictures of farms and farmers. It has to be about the communities that surround the farms. Many American rural communities are struggling and stand to benefit from brands that will pay extra for organic and regenerative communities.

“I don't know if people necessarily would know when they're buying that box of pasta at Whole Foods, that it's also coming from a farmer like us also in Colorado,” Jones says.

For Devin Jamroz, CEO of Boulder-based stone-ground flour supplier Dry Storage, Colorado exists as a kind of laboratory for the relationship between natural products brands and farmers that is local now but could be reproduceable in other regions.

Dry Storage buys wheat from Colorado famers, grinds it and sells the flour to restaurants—“We serve all five Michelin-star restaurants in Colorado”—and is hoping to grow a handful of brands into a bigger constellation that could support more demand, and more farmers. If the concept can be proven at scale, it could expand beyond Colorado, but the “local” and “circular” market is crucial, Jamroz says. Relationships are built. Brands grow alongside the farmers and vice versa. “It creates more security for the farmers,” he says.

Such local/regional networks, Jamroz says, could help the natural products industry build the kind of partnership with farmers that the rural economies need. “A lot of times, what you're seeing is natural products will still be sourced from giant factory farms that just have the right certification, and you may not actually be helping these farmers out very well,” he says. Such farms are often tasked to max out production at a scale that’s “not really great for the land.”

When brands start asking for regeneratively grown ingredients, Jamroz contends they are supporting both the health of the soil and the health of the communities that are supplying them. He points to his company’s work with Jones and her farm. Buying from Jones not only helps keep her in business, it helps the Rye Resurgence Project she is spearheading, building a market for rye encourages farmer to use rye as a winter cover crop, which in turn supports healthy soil and minimizes “dust bowl” conditions. “It can be a bit of a cash crop while also protecting their land,” Jamroz explains.

The benefits of brands building the kind of direct relationships with farmers that Trotta wants to see are not only for the farmers, of course. Storytelling is increasingly important to natural brands, but Maura Gramzinski of RedCamper Picnic Supply says buying exclusively with First Fruits Organic Farm in Western Colorado has given her something more than stories to tell: better quality and better service than she could ever find working with a distributor.  She calls the relationship “amazing.” She tries to tell the story, but she’s not she’s done it justice.

“I try to make it as transparent as possible when I'm talking about my products and who I work with, because I don't think it's very visible to people at all, and I also don't think anyone understands the challenges that they have as rural farmers and getting their products to the rest of us.”