Allen County
Founder Profile
Rowan
Greene
Business
Plowshares Cooperative Food Hub
Founded
2014
Grant Date
March 2019
Idea
A cooperative that seeks to make healthier, higher-quality local foods more accessible for businesses, organizations, and families.
The local choice should be the easiest choice.
Rowan Greene’s is passionate about impacting the local food production and distribution community. After partnering with Heartland Communities, Rowan helped pioneer Plowshares Cooperative Food Hub with the goal of creating a healthier, wealthier, and unified Northeast Indiana.
At its core, Plowshares manages aggregation, distribution, and promotion of food from local and regional produces. In other words, they connect local food producers with restaurants and caterers, retail grocery stores, and individuals and families. All of this happens with the goal of making healthy, nutrient-dense foods locally easily accessible to everyone in a community.
Ninety percent of Indiana’s food dollars are spent on national and international levels. In addition to providing healthier options to the Northeast Indiana community, Rowan also hopes that Plowshares will make an impact on this region’s economy. Instead of outsourcing food production, Rowan wants to keep that money circulating in the local market.
Plowshares covers everything from connecting producers and customers to online ordering to delivery.
Rowan is hoping to expand the company to make it even more easily accessible to those who need it most by implementing a process that mimics the food stamp system. His goal with this process is to allow people in poor communities and food deserts to gain access to the healthy and sustainable foods they need.
Plowshares Cooperative Food Hub has support from big names in the local food industry, including Joseph Decuise, who is hosting their Grand Launch in May.
As for the future, Rowan hopes to continue on a trajectory of growth, implementing his food hub cooperative business plan for other regions in need around the world.
Business Updates
Fort Wayne’s Plowshares Food Hub starts next development phase
Fort Wayne’s Plowshares Food Hub has planned a grand launch to celebrate moving to its next development phase after passing the first Indiana State Department of Health inspection of its local food aggregation facility.
Plowshares Cooperative Food Hub
Plowshares Food Hub is a local food distribution co-op opening in Fort Wayne that will bring specialty crop farmers and ranchers together to create convenient access to locally grown and produced foods that are not readily available through existing distribution channels to wholesale & institutional buyers.
Exploring local and ethically-sourced food with Heartland Communities
Local food and green collar industries have seen renewed interest in recent years. Living Fort Wayne recently caught up with Heartland Communities’ Jain Young and Rowan Greene to discuss the mission of Heartland Communities and their vision for the future.
Local food producers, buyers to talk food hub development
Most of the food consumed in northeast Indiana travels many, many miles before making it to the plate, and several residents interested in shortening that distance plan to discuss the subject and learn more about it at the Fort Wayne Local Food Summit.
Local food hub location attracts suppliers
A delicious opportunity to experience northeast Indiana’s emerging local food culture will be showing up soon at area Kroger stores.
It is blackberry picking season, and about 50 members of the Grabill Indiana Berry Cooperative are busy harvesting the crop from special trellises set up to grow in Allen and LaGrange counties.
