THE man behind Harvest Hampers is on a mission to further promote Hawkesbury farmers by offering locals the chance to purchase shares in a local farm.
Aaron Brocken operates Harvest Hampers, a business he set-up in 2014 as the missing link between producers and customers in the Hawkesbury area.
Harvest Hampers gathers together seasonal produce from local farmers, pays them a fair price for their work, then home delivers boxes of local, seasonal produce directly to customers - both at home and increasingly, at restaurants.
Mr Brocken’s latest idea is to set-up a food agricultural model in the Hawkesbury in which locals can buy shares on a local farm and reap the rewards of its seasonal produce.
The idea is based on a model called CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in which users purchase a ‘share’ of vegetables from a regional farmer and have it delivered at set intervals.
“I wanted to have a farm that was a lot more embedded into the community,” said Mr Brocken, who is currently restoring a farm at Mount Tomah.
“CSA is an opportunity to buy shares on the farm and get food from it for the season. It has to be a really diverse farm - that’s the thing that stuck out for me about the CSA model.
“The goal is to get up to 60 people by end of the year who would be interested in putting shares into this model.
“It’s a fairly new thing in Australia. I wanted to set it up like a crowdfunding model, except you’re giving funds towards a farm. You’re investing in a venture and an enterprise that’s going to be growing and sustaining that.”
Mr Brocken is currently working on a crowdfunding website for his new agricultural model, which he plans to launch in the coming months. Watch this space.
