article Building a Local Food System That Lasts

Early on in our journey as farmers, I found it interesting that whenever you get a group of farmers in a room, the conversation often turns to "how to get free government money to do that thing." Coming from a background in software, I found that curious. In most industries, the mindset is, "Find people who want to buy the thing, so you can do the thing."

At Kakadoodle we’ve been careful not to build our business to depend on the government. Here’s why:

Even before the funding freeze, government programs came with challenges and uncertainties. Take the LFPA program, for example (one of the programs now frozen). We were initially told it would start in January 2024, so we invested in 2,000 additional hens to meet that demand. But the program didn’t actually launch until the end of March. In the meantime, we had no market for those eggs and ended up donating them—a $40,000 loss. That experience, among others, reinforced the idea that we shouldn’t build Kakadoodle to rely on government support.

Now, with the funding freeze, that belief is being reinforced again.

But it’s not just a reactionary response. The bigger vision behind Kakadoodle is to help create a local food system that supports thousands of small farms—farms that work with nature to produce healthy, chemical-free food. But here’s the reality: food from local, chemical-free farms is expensive, and the market for it is still relatively small, especially on a local scale.

The LFPA program was designed to help bridge that gap by purchasing food from small farms at prices that could sustain them and then distributing that food through food banks—a win-win. It was an amazing program. We’d deliver eggs to food banks, and people would literally cheer. It was incredible to be part of something like that, and it wouldn’t have happened without government support.

However, LFPA was always meant to be temporary—to establish a market and eventually phase out. Without it, food banks can only afford to pay $2.20 per dozen for eggs, which is far less than our cost to produce them. To continue selling at those prices, we’d have to:

1. Scale up to 30,000+ hens
2. Use cheaper, chemically treated feed
3. Keep the hens indoors for efficiency

In other words, without government support, we’d have to become a commodity egg producer—exactly what we set out not to be.

Here’s how I see it (and I could be wrong): If we want to make chemical-free food more accessible, we need a new, larger group of consumers who choose to vote with their grocery dollars to support local farmers. It all comes back to the consumer.

If enough people make that choice, everything else falls into place. Small farmers gain a stable market. The system becomes decentralized, making it more resilient and self-sustaining—no more empty egg or meat shelves. It’s not dependent on government funding, which can be unpredictable. And most importantly, local, chemical-free food flows consistently into our communities.

That’s the heart of what we’re trying to build with Kakadoodle—a movement of consumers who support chemical-free farming. And we will always be grateful for both community and government support in helping make that vision a reality.