Twenty-seven hundred miles away in south-central Pennsylvania, the farmer-owned Tuscarora Organic Growers (TOG) co-op underscores the strength of this system. Formed in 1988 and named after a nearby mountain range, TOG now runs produce deliveries from 30 organic farms to stores and restaurants in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

The impetus for the co-op came from Jim Crawford, a Vietnam veteran who went back to the land in the 1970s and began New Morning Farm with his wife Moie. The Crawfords are well known in Washington, D.C., where they sell at two farmers’ market stands, as well as through TOG. Crawford began by selling vegetables out of the back of his pick-up truck in Georgetown 35 years ago, when the phrase “local foods” hadn’t yet been invented.

Sitting at a desk piled high with seed catalogs, invoices, and farm magazines, behind a picture window overlooking his fields, Crawford emphasizes that the food always sold itself. “People always wanted fresh, home-grown, and organic, and we never produced enough—we still don’t,” he says. “But TOG allowed us to do far more than we could ever do on our own.” The co-op pulled in growers who didn’t want to market directly in the city and gave them an outlet.

Unlike Organically Grown Company, TOG’s farmers felt it was vitally important to their identity to remain local, even if it meant shutting down in the winter. In fact, TOG has only begun to sell during the off season in the past few years. Its farmers put up greenhouses and, as OGC did in Oregon, pulled in crops from other organic co-ops from Maine to South Carolina.

My visit with Crawford, however, came at a bittersweet moment in this story, for the co-op’s manager—Chris Fullerton, a one-time farm intern who took over the reins of the operation 14 years ago—was leaving. The farmers held a party in his honor at TOG’s red warehouse, feasting on smoked ribs, salads, cakes and beer.

“It was pretty amazing,” Crawford said. “Every farmer there spoke up and thanked Chris. More than a few said they wouldn’t still be farming if it wasn’t for him.” An Amish farmer who could not be on hand (since such parties are religiously fraught) sent on a handmade book with pictures and poems from his eight children—a modest thank-you from a farmer who owes the sale of his entire crop to the co-op.