Our Partners
Sun Produce Cooperative is proud to collaborate with organizations that share a deep commitment to improving health, nutrition, and food access for Arizona’s most vulnerable residents. Together, we focus on supporting low-income families, SNAP participants, school-age children, and seniors, groups too often left behind in our food system.
While each partner brings distinct strengths in education, community empowerment, nutrition, and policy, we all recognize that our greatest impact will come from working in concert for the greater good. By aligning our expertise, resources, and on-the-ground experience, we aim to create a unified, high-performing network capable of delivering healthier food, stronger communities, and lasting systemic change.
Arizona Department of Agriculture
The Arizona Department of Agriculture supports Sun Produce Co-op with a Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program (RFSI) grant through USDA AMS. The grant supports the co-op to aggregate, transport, and distribute local food products across eight Arizona counties through collaboration with three additional food hubs –Pivot Produce in Southern Arizona, Rosebird Farms in Northern Arizona, and Orchard Community in South Phoenix. The goal is to enhance these hubs’ capacity and increase local food product distribution by 30% by the project’s end. Funding includes adding and improving cold storage capacity to boost food distribution to underserved areas, enhancing coordination among the four food hubs through improved information technology systems, supporting 77 small farmers by increasing the distribution and sales of their products by 30%, providing food safety training to farmers attained through improved coordination facilitated by a Local Food Market Network Development Project Manager, and expanding the aggregation, transportation, distribution and food safety of local food products across multiple counties.
Double Up Arizona
Double Up Arizona helps make Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) accessible and affordable for all. When households use SNAP/EBT to purchase a CSA share, Double Up cuts the cost in half, making weekly bags of farm-fresh, seasonal produce more affordable while directly supporting local farmers. The program strengthens family nutrition, stretches food budgets, and keeps more dollars circulating in Arizona’s local food economy.
Unlimited Potential
Since 1985, Unlimited Potential has been uplifting families in South Phoenix through literacy, education, and self-empowerment. Serving predominantly Latino, low-income households, they offer English literacy and GED classes for adults, along with early childhood workshops that prepare young learners for future academic success. Their dual-language model honors cultural identity while strengthening reading, writing, and communication skills in both English and participants’ native languages. Through additional programs in parenting, family reading, and nutrition, Unlimited Potential nurtures the whole family and creates pathways for long-term success.
Pinnacle Prevention
Pinnacle Prevention is an Arizona nonprofit dedicated to growing healthier families and thriving communities. Their team of dietitians, researchers, and social scientists works to ensure everyone, regardless of income or ZIP code, has access to nutritious food, safe spaces for physical activity, and the opportunity to build a positive relationship with food. From statewide food policy to grassroots programs, Pinnacle Prevention drives lasting change across Arizona’s food system.
Smaller Scale, Bigger Impact.
Sun Produce Cooperative was born from a shared challenge—and a shared vision. In 2017, a group of small-acreage farmers across central Arizona came together with one goal: to keep growing good food while building a more sustainable path forward.
Working long hours and growing beautiful produce wasn’t enough to compete with large-scale, industrial agriculture. So we joined forces—not just as farmers, but as partners in a new kind of food system. With support from local organizations and national food system experts, we created a cooperative that helps us thrive together.
Today, Sun Produce connects more than 40 Arizona farmers with schools, families, nonprofits, and businesses across the state. As a multi-stakeholder cooperative, we coordinate production, distribution, and marketing, making it easier for small farms to reach new markets and for more people to enjoy fresh, local food.
Together, we’re building a healthier, more resilient Arizona that values community, equity, and the farmers who feed us.
Our Mission
The Sun Produce Cooperative’s mission is to strengthen Arizona’s local food system by building sustainable markets for small farms, expanding access to fresh, seasonal produce, and supporting health, equity, and overall community wellbeing.
We connect farmers, families, schools, and partners to create a healthier and more resilient food ecosystem that keeps dollars local and nourishes our communities. Because good food should be affordable, easily accessible, and available to everyone.
Strengthening Farms & Feeding Communities
Sun Produce Cooperative is a multi-stakeholder agricultural and marketing cooperative made up of Arizona growers, distributors, buyers, and market specialists.
Through the cooperative model, we enable our members to pool product volume, diversify their offerings, and share resources and expertise, expanding their ability to reach and serve new markets. Sun Produce Cooperative connects increased access to local foods with improved individual and community health, strengthened farm viability, and broader economic development.
Today, we offer more than 200 locally grown and value-added products and coordinate weekly orders from over 80 customers across eight of Arizona’s 15 counties. Our customers include wholesale and retail outlets, schools, hospitals, farmers’ markets, restaurants, CSA and farm bag programs, food banks, and community-based nonprofits. Once an order is placed, Sun Produce Cooperative purchases (producers’ or local) products, ranging from produce to honey, frozen processed poultry, cheese, bread, pastries, dried herbs, spices, and eggs, and sorts and distributes them to buyers statewide.
AZ Food Hub Partners
Sun Produce is working intentionally with food hubs across Arizona to create a connected network with shared logistics and infrastructure to increase the capacity of small-acreage farms and expand local food access. Food Hub partners include:
With a mission to act as an intermediary between small scale farms & wholesale markets, Pivot Produce provides access to healthy food and helps re-build regional agriculture economies to foster community care.
Pivot Produce aims to bridge the gap in an ever-expanding farm-to-table local food movement.
For farmers, Pivot functions as a distributor, giving back valuable time on the farm where they can focus on growing and worry less about selling their vegetables, fruits and more.
For chefs and restaurants, Pivot offers the unique ability to connect to an existing network of Tucson-area purveyors.
Founded by chef Erik Stanford in November 2015, Pivot Produce combines his passion for innovating in the kitchen with a sincere devotion for local farms and produce. Stanford spends his days making connections between farmers and restaurants so both can focus on doing what they do best.
Think of Pivot Produce as the antidote to massive corporate food distributors: farmers get a fair price for their wares and restaurants get to use the best of what Southern Arizona farms have to offer. It’s distribution on a local level, fostering a supportive and engaged food scene each step of the way.
At Rosebird Farms, we’re on a simple mission: connect people with incredible local food while supporting the farmers who grow it. From the soil to your table, we believe food should be fresh, seasonal, and thoughtfully grown. We also know that building a stronger, more resilient local food system takes collaboration, care, and a little stubbornness (qualities we’ve got in spades).
Our farm is where it all started and still where it all comes back to.
What began as a green thumb gone a little wild and a quarter-life crisis that nudged us back to the land has grown into something much bigger, but the heart of it remains the same. We grow seasonal produce, flowers, and specialty crops across 12 greenhouses in Kingman, raise a few curious sheep, and generally like to try new things just to see what we can make happen.
We care about sustainability and biodiversity, sure, but mostly we care about growing food and flowers that actually mean something. Every plant we put in the ground feeds people, supports pollinators, and keeps the soil happy for the long haul. Even as our operation has expanded, the farm still roots us in place and reminds us why we got into this in the first place.
We work with a network of small, independent farmers, cooperatives, and food producers across Northern Arizona and throughout the state. By aggregating their products, we make it easier for people to access fresh, local food while helping farmers reach more customers and strengthen their businesses.
Together, we’re creating a food system that works for everyone: the people who grow it, the people who eat it, and the land that sustains it.
Promoting a circle of wellness for our world, we advocate for change through action toward a sustainable and equitable future. Our toolbox includes gardening, education and community engagement.
At The Orchard, we are dedicated to promoting locally grown produce and fostering community wellness. Over the past 15 years, we have cultivated a space where learning, growth, and nourishment come together. Our mission is to create and implement programs that provide direct service and advocate for change in the systems of food, personal wellness, education, and the stewardship of all species on Mother Earth. Together, we can create a more sustainable future.
Sun Produce Co-op Farmraiser FAQs
Though Sun Produce Cooperative (SPC) is an agricultural cooperative, there is a place in SPC for anyone who wants to support local agriculture, not only farmers. Please read the information below to see where you and your friends, family, and business associates may fit into the Co-op.
Our Membership Model
Sun Produce Cooperative Membership Classes and Fees Definitions and Fees by membership type: The membership fee is a one-time fee paid to the cooperative.