Cutting in the middleman: an organic-farming advocate helps farmers quit tobacco.

• Author: Granados, Alex
• Position: PROFILE

Sandi Kronick, 35, has long been an idealist. Growing up on Long Island, N.Y., she became a vegetarian at age 11 after a friend, appalled at how animals were treated, announced he was giving up hamburgers and chicken fingers. "I thought, 'Gosh, 1 better start doing things that 1 care about, too,'" she recalls.

In high school, she became enamored with Ben & Jerry's, the popular ice-cream brand known for its hippie vibe and devotion to small, family farmers. She even attended one of the Vermont-based company's shareholder meetings to ask the founders to speak at her school. She got free ice cream instead. "I remember driving a little truck with tubs of Ben & Jerry's ice cream for some spirit week or something and playing The Beatles and thinking, 'We're changing the world.'"

At Oberlin College in Ohio, she became food coordinator of a student co-op, in charge of 24 students who worked with local farms to buy and pick up food served in 12 dining halls. She learned about sustainable agriculture and realized she didn't have to feel guilty about eating meat. "I started to engage with farms and realize there were some pretty happy chickens out there."

After graduating, she followed her boyfriend to North Carolina, where she went to work for Pittsboro-based Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, which promotes local and organic farmers. Shortly thereafter, she rode with a Tar Heel strawberry farmer to help him peddle his produce. Many of the nonprofit's clients, including Kronick's driver, were former tobacco growers trying to turn over a new leaf. But this guy was totally unprepared. He had no invoices and no inkling of how to fill one out. His tobacco crops typically were sold through auction or according to quota. "Everybody was doing the legwork for him," she says.

Plus, there were communication breakdowns between buyers and independent farmers. Wholesalers would ask for something, and farmers would grow it. But when farmers returned with a price, it was often more expensive than Chinese imports. "They keep disappointing each other," Kronick says. "And all we need is somebody bold enough or ballsy enough to want to pull out the details from these people like a dentist and make sure we're all on the same page. And when mess-ups happen, 'fess up."

The farmers needed a middleman. Kronick proposed the idea to the Stewardship Association, which launched Eastern Carolina Organics in 2004 with a $48,000 grant from the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund...