Building Regional Food Systems With Chris Jagger of Blue Fox Farm

Follow Chris on X: https://x.com/reggaj

Follow Chris on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluefoxfarm

Listen to Chris' podcast "Not Only Farmers": https://open.spotify.com/show/12YRGbk9IYMh4gbR0pTkEh?si=d14c005214ab418d

Chris Jagger on episode 129 of the "Farmer to Farmer" Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBplMcnNdO4

Chris Jagger and his wife Melanie Kuegler have been running Blue Fox Farm in southern Oregon since 2004. They started with 1 acre of mixed vegetable production, scaled to 45 acres, and now have scaled back to around 7 acres in vegetables. 

Besides farming, Chris has dipped his toes into many other realms of agriculture- consulting for other farms, running an ag supply business, starting a soil-based ag conference, and now looking at new ways to build the regional supply chain in the Pacific Northwest. The main goal in all of these endeavors is building community and feeding people.

I’ve known Chris from Twitter for years now, and he has some bold and innovative ideas about the industry, but his perspective is still also very grounded in the practicality of running a farm business. We discuss finding the right scale as a first generation farmer, the decision to sell retail vs wholesale, what it takes to build regional food systems, what technology is needed on smaller scale farms, and more.