21 Acres is a partner in the Puget Sound Food Hub along with two other nonprofit organizations and one family farm. We work cooperatively to aggregate and distribute food from producers in a six county area: Whatcom, Skagit, Island, San Juan, Snohomish and King.  The farms hat we work with are stewards of the land — using some of the most sustainable production practices available.  Many of the farms are Certified Organic and all are working to limit pesticide use and reliance on any unnecessary equipment that burns fossil fuels.

As part of 21 Acres mission, our goal is to help find ways to limit greenhouse gasses and adverse affects on global warming. Traditional food systems are built on moving (trucking, shipping or flying) food long distance using fossil fuels.  We’re striving to building something different — an infrastructure that not only helps small family farms access local wholesale buyers, but doing so at an affordable cost while limiting or eliminating any COs emissions.

21 Acres currently uses a Dodge Sprinter to move food, fueled with bio-diesel from reclaimed oil-not from monocrop productions; but we want to do better.  The only way to further limit our carbon footprint related to food hub transportation is to use an all-electric vehicle.

We conducted extensive research into any an all options for an electric vehicle — here in the United States and abroad.  There weren’t many companies still left building electric trucks (many have filed bankruptcy in recent years) and those that were, didn’t have the refrigeration and the range capacity that we needed.  The result, then, has been to undertake construction of a totally unique, refrigerated, long range truck made with vintage parts, Tesla batteries and all American-made elements.

I look forward to blogging about the process and sharing details with you as we work to improve the infrastructure to move food. If you ever have specific questions please feel free to email me: rbcrowder@21acres.org.  We want to share what we’re learning.

— Robin