Member Spotlight: Yellowbird Foodshed

Originally published in the Autumn 2024 edition of the OEFFA newsletter.

In many ways, Yellowbird Foodshed is a model for how our food system should work. Local, sustainable farmers are fairly paid and have stable access to the market, and eaters can access healthy food that connects them to home. A foodshed, after all, is the region that produces food for its population. For Yellowbird Foodshed, that population is Ohioans. 

As I toured their Mount Vernon, Ohio facility, Yellowbird Foodshed (YBFS) co-founder Benji Ballmer pointed out that it had once housed antiques. When Ballmer first arrived, he brought a dry-erase board to his new office and wrote: “Mission: to decentralize the food system one customer at a time.” 

As YBFS expanded its operations, it began to take control of more of the building, now using a 10,000-square-foot space to receive, pack, and store produce, dried goods, and enough cardboard boxes for deliveries to more than 2,000 members. 

In 2014, YBFS was launched from Ballmer’s house. He worked on buying as much local food as he could find and getting it into the hands of Ohioans. “There’s a disadvantage in the marketplace for people who are growing at a small scale,” he said. “I’ve got to figure out how to give them an advantage.” 

He recognized that farmers’ markets weren’t always a viable financial solution for farmers, as limited sales required many to also work full-time as firefighters, nurses, and teachers. Ballmer also knew that consumers wanted to shop at farmers’ markets but often couldn’t do so year-round. 

So YBFS was born. They initially did 16 weeks of distribution in the first year, and now deliver around the state 52 weeks a year. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, when getting food was more expensive and less convenient than ever before, they really took off. With weeks-long waits for grocery orders at conventional stores like Kroger, YBFS stood out as a realistic alternative.

Customers began to request national brands, so YBFS started beefing up its line to include dairy, meat, snacks, and coffee. While Ohio brands were still prioritized, YBFS began to vet national brands based on sustainability and animal ethics. If they lived up to YBFS’ ethos—and the Foodshed could compete with prices offered by retailers like Whole Foods—then they were listed on their website. Yellowbird Foodshed became a true “one-stop farm shop.”

These efforts were driven by what Ballmer referred to as the “Netflix effect.” Consumers want what they want when they want it. He recognizes that YBFS customers already have to wait a week for their delivery, so he wanted to provide a little more flexibility and convenience than a conventional CSA. At YBFS, a subscription isn’t required (but having something in your cart every week does earn you a 5 percent discount). There is no upfront fee, and you can opt for few or no surprises by customizing your box. 

Modern customers are very much influenced by our modern food system. “There’s a reason the food system is the way it is,” said Ballmer. “There’s a reason that we wanted margarine and frozen meals and $5 Costco chickens. It’s easy. It’s homogenized, industrialized, commodified, cheap, and bland.” 

He shared some of the unique challenges YBFS has recently faced: broken-down delivery vans, sick drivers, and delayed orders. Large and mechanized enough to avoid some of these barriers, Ballmer says conventional retailers and agribusiness companies “buy it by the millions, grow it with poison, and just feed it to everybody at the cheapest prices possible because they don’t really care about who’s growing it.” As a result, the eater is disconnected from the food system upon which they depend. 

Alongside challenges, there are also rewards for Yellowbird Foodshed doing things differently. When Ballmer goes to Sweet Grass Dairy in Fredericktown, Ohio to pick up orders, he sees rich soil, biodiversity, and happy, healthy chickens. He also spoke about a recent call from a customer who had signed up for a weekly Farm Food Box because it would force him to eat better. As a result, the man proudly shared that he had lost 35 pounds and was able to get off his blood pressure medicine. 

It’s customers like these who are paving the way toward better health—and a stronger food system. Ballmer encourages more of us to ask ourselves about our willingness to say, “I am going to vote with my dollar, with my fork, every single day, and know the way I’m spending my money will change the system.” 

He finds hope in examples like Switzerland, how their refusal of genetically modified ingredients urged brands to change their formulations. Americans can do the same. There is power in our daily food choices. We can make decisions that support our health, soil, local economies, local communities, and even national security. 

Our modern American society is facing a number of crises. “I don’t know how to fix all of it,” shared Ballmer. “But part of it is we’ve got to try to get our spending dollars into the hands of the people growing our food… We can build that culture, that society, we just have to value that over everything else—fast, cheap, bland, poison, and all the other things.” 

Learn more about YBFS and their 100 percent traceable produce, meat, grocery, and wellness products by visiting yellowbirdfs.com. 

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