Becoming a Grow Lightly
Grower / Producer
Interested in supplying produce or goods to Grow Lightly? Get in touch via email
FAQ:
Q: Do I need to have an ABN?
A: You need to provide an invoice each time you supply goods. If you are not a registered business, you can still supply goods as a donation, or check with your accountant about earning income for your financial situation.
Q: Can I sell produce as a Hobby?
(As per the Business.vic.gov.au website, link HERE)
A: Whether your hobby is a business depends on factors such as your purpose and how you operate. It doesn’t matter how much you earn – there's no financial threshold to tell you if your hobby is a business.
As a hobby you:
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can recoup the costs of materials when gifting or selling your work as long as you are not intending to make a profit
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don't need to declare the income you make from your hobby to the Australian Tax Office (ATO).
You're most likely in business if you:
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intend to make a profit from your activities
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undertake the activity regularly and in a structured and businesslike manner
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have registered a business name or secured an Australian business number (ABN)
Q: How does it work, to supply produce to Grow Lightly?
1. Once you have signed up as a Grower/Producer and you have signed the Growers' Charter, you subscribe to a growers mailing list.
2. An email is sent out each Wednesday, asking what produce you have available for the week.
( If you have no produce available, you ignore the email.)
3. If you do have produce we ask you to reply before 5pm on Thursday of that week, telling us what you have, how much of each (by weight or by item or both, whichever is appropriate) and what price you will invoice us for the produce.
4. We will then list the produce (with an added margin) on our online store (that opens between 2pm Friday and 5pm Sunday).
The Open Food Network is the platform we use to run our Grow Lightly store
https://openfoodnetwork.org.au/growlightly-vegiebags/shop
5. On Monday, or as early as we are able to do it, we will email you to let you know how much of your produce has sold from the online store over the weekend (i.e. what you will need to bring in).
6. On Tuesday at around 10-11.30am you can deliver your produce to the hub at Coal Creek in Korumburra
(if unable to make this time, arrangements can be made to deliver produce to a drop box).
7. When you bring your produce in, you need to email your invoice to a nominated email address provided at sign up.
The invoice needs to include what the produce is, how much of it, the date, your name, and on the first occasion the name to list produce under (i.e. property name/ your name), property locality & your bank details.
(Also a note if any of the produce is to be donated!)
8. We check produce for quality and comparability. For example, as you can imagine, bunches of silverbeet or rhubarb from two or three different growers may be very different. We don’t insist on perfectly uniform, blemish-free produce, but it must meet our standards of general high quality.
If you do bring in produce without having let us know first, we may not be able to pay our standard price
Q: Are you a not-for-profit?
Grow Lightly is a social enterprise, incorporated as a not-for-profit company. What this means is, not that we don’t want to turn a profit, but that any profits we DO make are put back into the business, not creamed off by shareholders or directors! In fact there are a number of projects we are anxious to initiate that depend on having extra funds.
Q: How "Local" is Local ?
‘Local’ for Grow Lightly means within about sixty kilometres of Korumburra, though we don’t waste time calculating distances.
Occasionally we may source organic produce from further distances for items that are in demand, or where local supply cannot be sourced as easily. An empty shop isn't much use for a hungry community, but we prioritise local, and organic.
Q: How do you set standard pricing?
We are anxious to support local growers such as yourselves, and try to pay a reasonable price for what you grow. However, we are also keen to make good, fresh, organically grown produce available to all local people, not just those who can afford to pay a premium. That means we have to keep our retail prices down; and that, of course, means our margins are pretty small. So donated produce is always welcome, as is volunteer help with the online store and at the markets we do.
Q: What's the difference between Organic, and Certified Organic?
(Information from the ACCC website, link HERE)
Businesses may choose to become certified by an organic certification body. Many products carry a symbol, logo or other trademark to show that they are certified organic in this way. There are various private certification bodies. The minimum standards required to get certification may vary between these bodies. Some certification standards for these bodies are based on the National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce. The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment owns this standard and it is mandatory for Australian organic products intended for export. Some businesses instead choose to be certified to the voluntary standard (AS 6000-2015) if only selling in Australia. A business that labels its product as certified organic must ensure that the certification claimed on its product is genuine, and any certification mark is used in accordance with the certification requirements.
Grow Lightly accepts both Certified Organic, and organic methods grown produce, and clearly labels this on every listing in the shop with the location that the produce has come from.
As far as organic growing methods are concerned, we try to run regular discussion groups and workshops, and we do ask all our growers to sign our Growers' Charter which clearly outlines that the producer agrees to producing foods of high nutritional value, without recourse to synthetic fertilisers, herbicides or pesticides.
We don’t require organic certification as most of our growers are too small for that to be a practical possibility; but we do welcome organically certified produce if it is available.