Urban Agriculture Cooperative: The network behind Harvest, Newark’s new food hub

Crates of kale, carrots and eggs arrive daily at the Urban Agriculture Cooperative distribution center in Newark from farms across New Jersey.

They help make Harvest — RWJBarnabas Health’s farm-to-community health initiative — unique, as they will be used in both the teaching kitchen and commercial kitchen on site.

But what looks like a simple, 2,100-square-foot loading area is actually the front door to a regional food network that Urban Agriculture Cooperative has been quietly stitching together for years — a way for small urban growers, year-round operations upstate and even regional distributors to gain access to new markets, helping to make those communities healthier in the process.

UAC Executive Director and Co-Founder Emilio Panasci described it to BINJE this way:

“Urban Ag Co-Op is a nonprofit social enterprise,” he said. “We are a wholesaler. We purchase everything from farmers. We don’t ask them to donate.

“We get really great fresh stuff, made to order based on what different community partners need.”

Those partners range from organizations which prepare veggie bags and boxes for seniors and other community programs, to free community fridges looking for ready-to-eat items.

The model varies, Panasci said.

“Some people buy wholesale from us,” he said. “When they let us know what they need, we go out to our network of growers and curate as best we can.

“We also try to introduce them to some new products and things that our farmers are trying to sell or trying to get into the market.”

That network is substantial.

“Over the course of the year, we work with 30 to 35 farmers based in New Jersey,” he said.

Having its distribution center inside Harvest will enable UAC to have even greater impact, Panasci said.

Inside the building, UAC’s distribution work now connects directly to a commercial kitchen next door, turning raw produce into economic opportunity.

The kitchen, available to food entrepreneurs through a membership model, is already attracting small business owners. Panasci pointed to a female entrepreneur in the building who makes a kale salad recipe that she is starting to sell to restaurants.

“She needs a kitchen space, and she needs a distributor like us to get her wholesale kale,” he said.

The connections don’t stop there. With so many restaurants nearby and a growing network of free community fridges, the co-op sees Harvest as a place where recipes, health guidance and distribution all intersect.

Even surplus becomes part of the loop instead of a loss, Panasci said.

“Sometimes an order will change, and we’ll have something leftover, like several cases of celery,” he said. “Now it can make its way into a soup stock, whereas before, it usually just got composted.”

Panasci is thrilled to be a part of Harvest.

“Nothing has ever been done like this before in the state,” he said.