Page 27 - BusinessWest February 3, 2021
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Growth Market
Phoenix Fruit Farm Continues to Expand and Promote Local Food
By Joseph Bednar
Elly Vaughan knows a lot about the global food system — and the myriad problems it has posed over the decades.
“Local food is so important for so many rea- sons,” she said. “The global food system has a
lot of issues — environmental issues, workers’ human-rights violations, the way the global agri- cultural food system tends to strip people of their water rights in some countries.
“Globalized food — a large, centralized food system — can really damage the environment and communities, and when we buy local, we break that cycle,” she added. And, as owner of Phoenix Fruit Farm in Belchertown, she’s certain- ly doing her part.
“We’re delivering money directly from the consumer to the farmer, so that eliminates the middleman — the consumer gets a fresher prod- uct, and the farmer gets a better price point,” she said. “The farmer can pay their workers living wages and can be conservative about environ- mental resources, which affects climate change, while offering affordable, high-quality food to local communities and families. That’s what a local food system does.”
Taking notice of how Vaughan has grown and diversified Phoenix since purchasing the prop- erty in 2017, the Amherst Area Chamber of Com-
Elly Vaughan with some of the trees that will blossom with life — and fruit — when the weather warms up.
  merce gave her the Leader in Innovation Award at its 2020 A+ Awards, “for being instrumental in cultivating relationships with other local busi- nesses to improve the economic climate of Belchertown.”
That’s gratifying for someone whose business motto is “fruit with a conscience.”
“Small farms are disappearing all the time in this country — it’s been a perennial struggle for the last 30 or 40 years,” she told BusinessWest.
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FEBRUARY 3, 2021 27
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