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farm fresh growers marketing association, inc.

Farm Fresh Growers Marketing Association Inc. (FFGMA) is a farmer owned co-operative incorporated in July of 1996 under the laws of the State of Ohio. Farm Fresh Growers Marketing Association, Inc. currently rents office and warehouse space at the Agri-Business Center in Winchester, Ohio located in Adams County. It is located 1 mile from the Appalachian Highway, which gives it good access to the major markets of Cincinnati, Columbus, and the surrounding areas. The majority of the customers are located in the Midwest area. The association attracts about 30-100 members each year from 9 counties in Ohio and Kentucky depending on projects. Farm Fresh Growers Marketing Association has three part time employees - a bookkeeper, a secretary, and a warehouse manager. The association also hires 10 part time employees seasonally.

The goal of the co-op is to return as much as possible to the grower. They do this by providing profitable access to markets for its members. Specifically, the association seeks to link buyers and sellers (members) to facilitate marketing of the producers’ products. These linkages can include contracting, sorting and grading, assimilating, delivering the products, and in some cases, simply linking buyers to sellers. The organization strives to give individual growers access to services and equipment that would not normally be available to them. FFGMA is also interested in vertically integrating by owning and operating a processing facility. Again, the objective is to return more of the dollars to the farmers by adding value to their products.

The co-op has been involved in the pumpkin and fall ornamental business as well as growing peppers for the processing industry since the beginning of the organization. They are no longer raising peppers for processing, but instead have entered the Fresh Market Produce industry to obtain more value for the products. Farm Fresh teaches the growers management of the new crop from recommending seed varieties, to spray schedules, field visits and harvesting and drop off procedures. The co-op then cleans, sorts, grades, and packages the product. The co-op helps with purchasing packing materials, shipping setting up buyers, negotiating prices, invoicing and collecting from buyers, and paying growers. Farm Fresh will continue to expand into the Fresh Market industry in the future. They are also currently working on an arrangement to partner with a processor. This would give growers an opportunity to be involved in added value relationship and see the dollars not just from the product raised, but the finished product as well.

Farm Fresh Growers Marketing Association helps the grower with the part of raising crops that they are not familiar with – getting the product to market. Farm Fresh is proud of the fact that they have always fulfilled all of their contracts to their customers and as a result of supplying quality products in a timely manner, they have many repeat customers.