One way or another, food will once again be sold from a bricks and mortar premise in Flaxmere.
The closure of the suburb’s New World supermarket in February left a sizeable hole that Sustainable Hawke’s Bay is still trying to fill. It set up the Flaxmere Food Co-op, which began taking orders for boxes of fruit and vegetables in May.
Sustainable Hawke’s Bay chief executive Emma Horgan-Heke says the co-op eventually hopes to become a “supermarket-sized’’ enterprise that’s “run by the community and owned by the community”.
In the meantime, she won’t be shocked to see a supermarket chain return to servicing the 10,000 residents of Flaxmere. “My understanding is there’s something in the works, but that hasn’t been announced,’’ Horgan-Heke said. She imagines that’ll be at least two years away, by which time she anticipates the Flaxmere Food Co-op will have expanded its own footprint.
The co-op has intentionally started small, taking orders each week for about 20 boxes of fruit and vegetables packed and distributed by students from Flaxmere College for collection each Thursday from the local community centre. Between 30 and 40 of the $20, $30 or $40 boxes are now being enjoyed by residents each week. Over 50% of the produce is sourced from growers in Hawke’s Bay, which Horgan-Heke says will only increase as the co-op gains momentum.
“We’ll definitely look to extend what there is and eventually move away from a box kind of system, to more of a physical location where people can actually choose what they want,’’ she said. Meat, fish and bakery items are next on the shopping list, now that Sustainable Hawke’s Bay has proof that the concept works.
If there’s an issue with creating a co-op that has literal community buy-in, uses produce solely from Hawke’s Bay and can run out of commercial premises, it’s going to be funding.
Horgan Heke says Sustainable Hawke’s Bay, which is a registered charity and relies on a mix of local and central government funding, donations and lotteries grants, recently had two contracts fall over. It was previous funding for food resilience, for instance, that enabled Sustainable Hawke’s Bay to set up the Flaxmere Food Co-op.
“Our councils don’t fund like other councils throughout New Zealand,’’ Horgan-Heke said.
“So hubs like ourselves get between $200,000 and $400,000 a year from councils and up to a $1 million in contracts in some areas. But we, from all of our five councils, only get a total of $10,000. It was $25,000 before the cyclone and it’s dropped.’’
Horgan-Heke says Cyclone Gabrielle and the Covid pandemic proved that local solutions to food production and supply are critical. But she admits there isn’t much appetite at Parliament to support projects such as the Flaxmere Food Co-op at Parliament at the moment.
“With the austerity measures of the government, there’s very little investment in food resilience and community resilience so it will be harder to fund moving forward,’’ she said.
“We’ll find a way because we always do.’’
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