Donna Williams and the turnip truck

It had never occurred to Donna Williams, a former Manhattan investment banker with an MBA from Columbia University, that her professional trajectory might one day land her on a turnip truck—literally. The story begins with Jocelyn Zuckerman, Executive Dir. of Modern Farms Magazine. "She had this brilliant idea of marketing to human resources departments as a wellness program so at this point she is connecting 80 farms to 3,000 customers. She brings these boxes to the workplace including recipes that tell consumers how to prepare the food and part of it takes the onus of figuring out what to buy off the consumer. It makes it really easy for them."

Small farms with relatively low volumes of less-than perfect

produce often find it impossible to win contracts from major retailers, and it is challenging to build a base of individual consumers. So Williams strategy by taking on the role of intermediary—determining which products to include, drumming up demand, and delivering the goods to locations in New York and Connecticut—she relieves farmers of the burden of marketing.