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Consumers benefit from Nutrafarms strong relationship with local farmers

Supporting local farmers results in top quality product through Nutrafarms unique business model
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Nutrafarms started in 2001 to bridge what Russell Urbanoski, the founder and president, saw as a disconnect between consumers and local farmers in the retail food space. He wanted to cultivate a system that supported unique, sustainable farmers while providing consumers with an affordable local grass-fed product.

It now serves over 10000 Ontario families.

"We definitely didn't start out this size. We grew with integrity and, most importantly, with our farmers," Peter Amo, the provincial manager of Nutrafarms, said.

It's not just about providing consumers with an affordable clean, grass-fed product; it's also about helping the farmers with the business side that comes with farming.

"Farmers just want to be on the farm with their animals," Amo said. "They already put in so many hours to produce their yields. We [Nutrafarms] take away the pain of having to spend additional time at markets to promote and hopefully sell their product. We appreciate what they do and the efforts they make every day, and I feel they appreciate the consistency of our proud promotion of their products.”

The long-standing, nurtured relationships Nutrafarms has with its farmers across Ontario, in addition to Nutrafarm controlling its processing plants, gives them the ability to offer their consumers a three-year price guarantee.

Food inflation is a noticeable trend this year. According to the latest edition of Canada's Food Price Report, groceries will climb five to seven percent in 2022, adding approximately $1000 to a family of fours' grocery bill.

But once someone decides to start eating with Nutrafarm, they lock in the market price from the day the order is placed, protecting the consumer from price inflation for three years.

"The strength of these relationships lets us offer grass-fed beef, cage-free pork, free-range and pastured chicken without the additional retail markup you'd find at your grocery store," their website states.

Nutrafarms also takes the stress from grocery shopping by delivering their products directly to your home. Whether it's wanting to avoid stores due to the pandemic or escaping the experience of buying food with your kids in tow, Nutrafarm is convenient and safe with its no-contact deliveries.

Its farm packages allow consumers to customize their deliveries with the products they want and enjoy, including their local beef, chicken, pork farmers, wild fish and value added products like fruits, vegetables, organic pantry items and eco-friendly household cleaners.

Consumers can also know that when they buy from Nutrafarm, they support local farmers, like Chad and Dorothy Coghlin, chicken farmers based out of Coldwater, Ontario.

Nutrafarm's partnership with the Coughlin’s came from a desire to work with a sustainable, unique farm.

"Our product is different because we changed the environment in which we grow a chicken," Dorothy said.

Typically, chickens are grown in a barn with concrete floors and are run under supply management, meaning the chicken is bought and sold through bigger commercial companies that contract farmers to grow chicken on their behalf. But Nutrafarms local niche program allows the Coughlin's to raise the chickens the way they want: in an outdoor and floorless, portable shelter that is moved daily.

"We're raising them in an environment in which we think that a chicken would normally be raised in," Dorothy said.

The Coughlin's explained that they're giving the birds back to their natural environment where they can chase bugs and scratch and peck at the grass and dirt. In this environment, the chickens can thrive, which is reflected in the meat they produce, she said.

"Because the birds are out on pasture, they're getting natural sunlight, they're getting real fresh air, so there is a key difference," Dorothy said. "They're consuming fresh grasses… they're consuming bugs freshly. They can't do that in a barn."

"The biggest thing we want is to be part of the ecological cycle," Chad explained. "So our chickens need to be out on the dirt all the time to get the benefits of that."

The moveable pasture pens designed by the Coughlin's provide shelter for the birds while still letting them be outside on a new piece of fresh pasture every day and contribute to the ecological cycle. The birds supply fertilizer for the pasture, and the pasture provides nutrients for the chickens in what Chad describes as a "wonderful cycle."

Because the chickens naturally fertilize their land, it can regenerate itself every year, and there's no need to add any chemical fertilizers or seeds.

"The chickens provide so much nutrition for the plants that we're able to harvest hay off of our pasture as well to supply to our cows," Chad said.

The Coughlin's sustainability model is universal among Nutrafarm, which delivers its food in recyclable packages.

"There's really minimal impact on the environment which we want. And it's what everyone should want for every industry," Amo said.

To learn more about Nutrafarms, visit their site here.