But then here is Lively, a different sort of middleman, surrounded by a dozen young workers wearing T-shirts, tattoos, and telephone head-sets, chatting away making sales or arranging pick-ups from farms. Rather than taking a slice of the profit and leaving the farmer hungry, OGC is actually doing something that’s not recognized enough: It’s providing a vital service that connects grower and retailer in long-term partnerships.

It is just one of several such operations around the country that have built new markets for farmers, including Veritable Vegetable in the Bay Area, which has been pursuing this work for three decades; Tuscarora Organic Growers in the mid-Atlantic; or Co-Op Partners Warehouse in the Twin Cities, which feeds co-op supermarkets in the Upper Midwest. These distributors represent the next wave in local foods, providing a way to channel food into stores and offering a solution to farmers who want to diversify beyond small, direct sales.

This work will need to be replicated many times over if fresh, local foods are going to reach customers beyond high-end restaurants and farmers’ markets, which represent two to three percent of food sales, and begin to show up on many more plates.

OGC is now owned by its workers and a number of its farmer suppliers. Lively—the longest-running employee and guiding spirit of the company—joined in 1980. At the time, OGC was a fledgling non-profit enterprise aimed at helping farmers like himself.

As we talk about these roots, he reaches under his desk and pulls out a metal tool box filled with yellowing sales books from his days at Thistle Organics Farm. “The reason we formed the group was we couldn’t make enough money,” he says, showing me sales slips that total a few dollars here and there. Even in Eugene—ground zero back then for the organic movement—there weren’t enough natural food stores, and farmers’ markets were barely existent. So growers did what all businesses do—they competed against each other. “Everything I sold was another friend’s loss,” he says.

To resolve this no-win game, the farmers came together to coordinate planting schedules, so that everyone’s broccoli wouldn’t be harvested the same week. They also divvied up markets, so they could be assured of sales. Natural food stores could then have a dependable source of produce rather than relying on a farmer here, a farmer there. Within a few years, the non-profit morphed into a farmer-owned co-op and finally into a company owned by farmers and employees.