Food Files: Mark Lilly on How School Buses Could Change Everything

As the founder and owner of Farm to Family, Mark Lilly spends his days roaming around the Richmond, Virginia, area in a tricked-out school bus packed with fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, baked goods and a few pet rabbits.

He makes stops all around the area to sell his wares, transmitting hour-to-hour info on his location to potential shoppers via his Facebook page and Twitter feed. He responds to special requests for stops, as well as invitations from schools and retirements homes to talk to the young and the old about this unusual and exciting new venture.

While traveling vegetable peddlers are nothing new, Lilly’s fledgling business may well be a game-changer as our national conversation about the need to support small farmers and local food systems heats up.

I've written about him here on Change.org and elsewhere. Here’s what this friendly, low-key businessman and local-food-advocate had to say about what he’s doing and why.

How does the Farm to Family bus venture work?

Basically what it is, is a traveling farmers market or store. I outsource local produce from my family members, myself, friends and other farmers who I try to build relationships with.

Do you just go around the Richmond area or do you have a wider purview?

It’s a one-man operation. My wife helps me when she can, but she’s got a full time job. It’s a lot of work. I have people calling me from all over the state who want me to come to their city or town or location but quite frankly I could have ten other buses in cities that I’m working now and still probably not cover everybody that wants it.

So there’s a lot of demand?

Yeah, I bought another bus. I haven’t outfitted it yet but my plan is to get another one up and running and hire some people.

How many customers would you say you get at each stop?

Of course it depends on the day and the time of day. For a weekday, I get anywhere between 20 and 50, and on a weekend I get 100 or more.

What kind of reaction do new customers have? What do people say?

If they’ve never seen it, everybody is just kind of stunned because they’ve never seen anything life it. They say “wow!” Then they say, “this is really cool” or “this is a great concept.” One of those three things comes out of their mouths first thing before anything happens. [laughs] And then they inquire more in-depth and I explain what it is and why I’m doing it.

What led you to start such a venture?

Well, a couple of things just fell into place. First, I had the concept a couple years ago in the back of my head — hey, wouldn’t it be cool to get a bus and go to the farms and go to the restaurants and the chef can have a lot fresh stuff straight off the farm?

I probably wouldn’t have even started it had I not lost my job, which is one of the catalysts. The other catalyst is that I was in a Masters program at the University of Richmond in disaster science and emergency management. In one of our classes, the teacher said we had to pick a topic and write what we think that topic will be 20 years down the road. My topic was famine and severe hunger in the United States and Western countries in 2029.

As I got into my research I was just blown away. I mean everyone hears things about how the food system’s set up and how bad food is. But if you really get into some deep research, you’d be disgusted and appalled.

I already had that knowledge before I lost my job, and I had already purchased the bus before I lost my job. I just packaged it really nice. I took a bunch of old barn wood, some chicken write and burlap and plywood and turned the inside of an old school bus into an old barn-themed country-store kind of market. School buses resonate with just about anybody to everybody. From kids who can just walk to people 90 years old, they have some association with a school bus.

The whole concept of being able to shop and get local fresh produce right in their neighborhood right off a school bus just really blows [people] away. I also try to educate people about the items, what they’re eating, how it effects the body. It’s all an education process. They’re not just shopping. I’m talking about certain things on the bus, what it came from, what type of vitamins are in it, how they can prepare certain items.

I have some books and literature and movies and things they can watch to keep them up-to-date on this movement. I hand out free seeds to children so they can start their own gardens.

I have a lot of requests to go to schools. I’ve done about a half-dozen schools. From kindergartners to seniors in high school, I just take the bus and tell them what I’m doing, how I got started, how they can get involved.

What’s their reaction?

It’s like everyone else. They’re like “wow, this is cool!” The younger kids and even some of the older kids — I show them an acorn squash or something and they have no idea what it is. A lot of the little kids are like, “is this real food?” And I’m like yes, and they pass it around. And they’re like, “eewww, it’s got dirt on it! Eewww!”

Where else do you go?

I go to retirement homes. And I take food stamps; I try to work in low-income areas. I target them but there’s all types of dynamics involved with that. I’m not a nonprofit. It’s just me surviving week to week by myself. I have to put this stuff that I’m selling at a premium price. If I go to a low-income area they can’t afford it.

It’s all about perspective and priorities, so I try to educate them too. The way our food system’s set up is a perfect design to get people hooked on the bad processed food. So even though you put this food into the neighborhood, you can’t make people buy it, and a lot of them don’t have the means to cook it or don’t know what it is.

And this isn’t even just with low income, but people don’t have time anymore. They don’t have family meals. People just don’t have time and they don’t cook.

You said you sell some of your own produce on the bus? Do you have a farm?

My parents have a farm and my wife and I grown some stuff in our own yard that we sell. I couldn’t farm and do this too, there’s no way.

What most farmers do is they do farmers markets. I started piggy-backing on farmers markets when I started, just to get out there. But with the politics of farmers markets, I got kicked out of every market I got into. Because all the other farmers said that I wasn’t a farmer and I shouldn’t be there.

There’s just a lot of politics in markets…. it’s ridiculous, actually. I really don’t have a whole lot of good things to say about farmers markets. It’s a lot of politics. If I wanted to sell chicken and there was another person there selling chicken, they wouldn’t let me in to sell my chicken.

Anyway, I am a farmers market. There’s no use for me to be at a farmers market.

What job were you doing before you started the bus?

I was in the restaurant business for 20 years. I was a managing a restaurant. I’ve been doing that for the past eight years.

Do you ever need to have licenses? Do you run into trouble with that?

No, I haven’t run into any issues or anybody asking me for any kind of license. I mean I have a peddler’s license. But there’s no real category to put me in because no one’s ever done it. Even when I went to get [the peddler’s] license, no one knew what I was talking about. It was hard to get insurance, even. They were like “what are you talking about? A farmers market on a bus?”

Do you see this model as being a major possibility for changing our food system? Could you see it expanding and having a whole network of food-mobiles?

Absolutely. The proof is in the pudding. I’ve already gotten hundreds of messages from people all over the country and the world. There’s no reason why this bus couldn’t work in any town or city anywhere in the world. It’s great because you can get into any area. You don’t have to worry about setting up. You can penetrate wherever you want.

It’s wanted by everybody. I had 2 or 3 office complexes call me the other day wanting me to come to their offices, I have a hospital want me to come to heir hospital, I have universities want me to come to their universities, schools. You name it; health clubs, hair salons, restaurants. They want me to come park outside their place.

We had some snowstorms down here, it was blizzard conditions out, and I just posted on my Facebook — I’ve got about 1,500 fans — and I’m like, “I’m headed out in the snow, anyone wanting to make a minimum purchase of $25, get your neighbors, your family and friends together and call me.” It was one of the busiest days I’ve had. They would get the whole neighborhood involved. I’d go and everyone would come and have an experience.

I’ve had two people come up to me and tell me they had dreams that there was no food and all the supermarkets were out of food and the only place they could get food was on a school bus. Just random people. One people had it before I started this and another person had it after I started it.

That’s very symbolic, like this new way of doing things is our only hope.

It’s almost fool-proof. I would love to create all sorts of jobs and have these things set up all over the place. Starting next month, my wife and I are going to eat everything for a whole year right off the bus and we’re going to write a book about it.

During the winter, do you have a good amount of stuff on the bus?

Yeah, winter’s great. I’ve got butternut squash, acorn squash. I’ve got chestnuts, collard greens, kale, onion, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples, eggs, milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, spaghetti squash, bread. I have people who bake pies and breads and cookies for me. I’ve got maple syrup, apple butter, apple cider, peach cider.

You’re making me hungry!

Yeah, and that’s just in the winter. In summer it’s going to be great. We’re going to have cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, zucchini, melons, all kinds of lettuces.

I also have a CSA with Polyface. I sell Polyface meats and eggs. I have 80 members. So I have a relationship with them.

Good luck.

I’m not recreating the wheel. I’m just packaging an old system really nice. People have been delivering produce for a thousand years. But it’s a lot of hard work. This is a hard, hard way to make a living.

What's the most important thing people should know about our food system?

It’s going to fail. I don’t to be a fatalist or a pessimist but the writing’s on the wall. It’s unsustainable. It’s horrible. It’s killing people. In the research I got into was that next to the automobile, farming uses more petroleum than any other entity. If we rely on finite resources to produce vast quantities of food to feed the world, then that’s a system headed for failure.

But I think most importantly, tell people how they can change it. If I could tell them one thing it would be to eat locally. Grow your own food. Until recently, until the industrial revolution started, people grew and preserved their own food throughout history. We need to start growing our own food again.

Photo: Farm to Family