These small farmers were also pragmatic. They knew that certain regions excelled in particular crops, whether onions in Eastern Oregon, tomatoes and peppers in the warm southern part of the state, or peaches and apples in Washington. It would deny the benefits of these bio-regions if every market only drew from their own backyard, so the supply chain quickly grew regionally. No rigid 100-mile diet limitations here.

Then, the steady demand for fresh produce in the winter created another supply crunch. “We realized pretty early on that we’d have to provide year-round produce if we were going to keep our customers,” Lively said. So the company arranged for California farmers to supply produce from October to May, when the Pacific Northwest grows little more than parsnips, beets, turnips, leeks, and kale. To fill out the line, it began importing organic bananas from Mexico, but did so with principles: It contributes 60 cents a box to fund schools and health programs for farmers in Colima, Mexico. The program, created by its supplier, Organics Unlimited, has raised tens of thousands of dollars for these social programs.

But it didn’t stop there. Going beyond its product, OGC analyzed the guts of food distribution to save energy wherever possible—by converting trucks to bio-diesel, swapping out waxed boxes for reusable plastic produce bins, aiming for zero waste, and retrofitting the doors on its coolers and its lighting fixtures. “They’re really a bunch of social activists who are running a business,” says Natalie Reitman-White, a University of Oregon faculty member who also runs the company’s sustainability initiative.

Still, it has kept its regional identity with the LADYBUG label; a third of the produce it sells comes from three dozen farms in the Pacific Northwest—an amount that rises in the peak of the growing season and naturally tapers off during the winter.

At Spring Hill Farm, in Albany, Oregon, farmer Jamie Kitzrow is eager to tell me why this wholesale operation works. As we walk around his muddy fields and lush greenhouses, Kitzrow says he sold only at farmers’ markets for several years after he started farming in 1990. “Those were our poverty years,” Kitzrow says. He found it hard to pay a full-time staff he only needed during market days, so he expanded by building a wholesale channel.

The wholesale business has grown 50 percent annually, largely because of New Seasons Market. With Lively as the broker, Kitzrow sealed a deal to supply the chain with fresh greens for the entire season at a set price. “We were all willing to compromise to make it work,” Kitzrow says.