Legislators taste a whole new lunch

Nov 022012
 

To celebrate Farm to School Month, dozens of Oregon legislators headed to school cafeterias this October to check out what’s new on the menu.

Why did these legislator lunches take place? Statewide funding and legislation is key to growing Farm to School efforts in Oregon. House Bill 2800, passed in 2011, provides just under $200,000 in statewide funding to bring more Oregon-grown and processed foods into school lunches and support food, agriculture, and garden-based educational activities. Starting last week, school districts have the opportunity to apply for this funding to expand their Farm to School efforts.

Congressman Kurt Schrader (D, District 5) and Representative Brian Clem (D-Salem, District 21) eat a fruit- and vegetable-filled lunch with students after touring the Salem-Keizer Education Foundation’s (SKEF) Learning Gardens at Grant Community School.

Although the $200,000 will be awarded to just a few Oregon districts as part of a pilot program, Ecotrust research shows that every dollar spent on Oregon-grown and -processed foods has a significant multiplier effect on Oregon’s farming and processing industries.

In 2013, a growing group of Farm to School advocates will return to the legislature to ask for an expanded $5 million Farm to School grant program. These advocates, co-led by Ecotrust and Upstream Public Health, invited legislators to lunch to showcase the real impacts that Farm to School and school garden programming have for hungry kids and hard-working farmers in their communities.

Healthy school lunch gives young Oregonians – including the large number who experience food insecurity – a daily, balanced meal. Garden-based education helps increase children’s food literacy and teaches life-long healthy eating habits. Farm to School supports regional food economies and creates new markets for Oregon farmers.

Ecotrust helped organize three lunches: at Cascade Elementary in the Lebanon Community School District, Centennial Learning Center (CLC) in the Centennial School District, and Grant Community School in the Salem-Keizer School District. Increased funding from the state will allow schools like Cascade, CLC and Grant to sustain and expand their innovative programming and allow more schools across Oregon to develop successful programs.

Legislators get a taste of how school lunch is changing
On Food Day, October, 24, Representative Sherrie Sprenger (R-Scio, House District 17) toured Cascades Elementary. Student guides gave a tour of the district’s Planting Seeds of Change edible teaching and production gardens, which produced 800 pounds of food for the school meal program and a local hospital last year! (Learn more about the visit in this Democrat Herald story.)

On October 26, Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson (D–Gresham, District 25) and Representative Greg Matthews (D-Gresham, District 50) visited Centennial Learning Center. They experienced their innovative lunch program, which incorporates farm fresh produce. In August 2012, the district began incorporating a weekly share of vegetables from Dancing Roots Farm into its school lunches. All students learn to cook in the culinary program, which prepares breakfast and lunch daily for the school. Centennial Learning Center was also the first school in Gresham to pilot composting food scraps.

Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson (D–Gresham, District 25) and farmer Brian Dickerson of Dancing Roots Farm listen as Conrad Schumacher, Centennial Learning Center chef and teacher, describes the lunch they are about to eat, prepared by CLC students using vegetables from Dancing Roots.

Rep. Greg Matthews (D-Gresham, District 50) points out what’s on the menu for lunch at the Centennial Learning Center, highlighting vegetables from Dancing Roots Farm. He is flanked by the Oregon Department of Education’s new Farm to School Coordinator Rick Sherman, FoodCorps fellow Emily Ritchie, principal Jamie Juenemann, and the Oregon Department of Agriculture’s Farm to School Specialist, Michelle Ratcliffe.

On Halloween, October 31, Congressman Kurt Schrader (D, District 5), Representative Vicki Berger (R-Salem, District 20), and Representative Brian Clem (D-Salem, District 21) ate school lunch at Grant Community School. They joined Food Service Director Dave Harvey; representatives from the Salem-Keizer Education Foundation, Kaiser Permanente, and Ecotrust; and elementary students to tour the school garden, learn about the school’s composting program, participate in an apple taste test, and experience how the district is changing what students eat and how cafeterias source food. (Learn more about the visit in this Statesman Journal story and this Capital Press story.)

A raised bed in the Salem-Keizer Education Foundation’s Learning Gardens at Grant Community School overflows with abundant fall produce. Students at Grant report that kale is one of their favorite vegetables (!) – they turn it into tasty kale chips with School Garden Coordinator Brenda Knobloch.

FoodCorps service member Chelsea Thomsen and Salem-Keizer Education Foundation School Garden Coordinator Brenda Knobloch serve tastes of several varieties of Oregon apples to students in the cafeteria at Grant Community School.

From left: Representative Brian Clem (D-Salem, District 21), Representative Vicki Berger (R-Salem, District 20) and Congressman Kurt Schrader (D, District 5) check out the composting setup in the cafeteria at Grant Community School in the Salem-Keizer School District.

Photos by Stacey Sobell.

Ecodistricts Summit will work on smarter, more resilient cities

Oct 112012
 

The Portland Sustainability Institute will host the 2012 Ecodistricts Summit October 23- 26, as part of the ongoing effort to build smarter, more resilient, and more livable urban districts across the world. Policymakers, planners, developers, business leaders, and financers from around the world will forge solutions to some of the more pressing issues facing metropolitan areas.

Simply put, an Ecodistrict is a neighborhood or district dedicated to sustainability. The Ecodistricts Summit will allow for forward-thinking, collaborative ideas, bringing together some of the world’s best minds to tackle population, pollution, civic engagement, and community development.

Leaders will share tools and strategies for neighborhood-scale sustainability within cities.
[Photo Credit: Sam Beebe, Ecotrust]

 

 

Keynote speaker Carol Coletta is currently the leader of ArtPlace, an American initiative created by banks, foundations, and agencies (like the National Endowment for the Arts), that seeks to transform communities by investing in art and culture. She hosted and produced a nationally syndicated public radio show called Smart City, served as president of CEOs for Cities, and directed the Mayor’s Institute on City Design in Memphis.

Coletta has highlighted the importance of compact, local, intimate communities for creativity and connection.

PoSI is a nonprofit dedicated to building partnerships and incubating solutions that efficiently and strategically address infrastructure, transportation, and energy sectors of urban landscapes. This past spring, leaders from Austin, Bellingham, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Guadalajara (Mexico), Mountain View, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Vancouver (B.C.) met at Ecotrust for the first-ever Ecodistricts Institute to discuss neighborhood-scale planning in their respective cities.

To connect with the summit on social channels follow @pdxinstitute on Twitter and Facebook with hashtages #ecodistrictssummit and #greencities.

 

 

Going local in the Gorge

Jun 292012
 

While the Columbia Gorge is rich in orchards and wheat fields, local food makes up only 1% of the diet of residents in the five-county area straddling the Columbia River between Hood River, Oregon, and Goldendale, Washington. The majority of the region’s bounty flows out of the Gorge via commercial packhouses and semi trucks. The nonprofit Gorge Grown Food Network aims to change that. Mobilizing farmers, food producers and community members using the slogan “20 by 2020,” Gorge Grown’s goal is for 20 percent of the food eaten by Gorge residents to come from local farms and ranches by the year 2020.

Stevenson, Washington hosts a farmer's market as part of the Gorge Grown Food Network. Photo by Jan Sonnenmair

Through small grants, a Mobile Market, and the cultivation of strong food communities in small towns up and down the river, Gorge Grown strives for a future where more of what is produced in the Gorge is eaten in the Gorge. Edible Portland documents Gorge Grown’s trajectory over the past six years in our summer issue—but we didn’t have room to include this great story by Kerry Newberry about the birth of the Mosier, Oregon farmers’ market:

While Gorge Grown was building its program and establishing the Hood River farmers’ market, residents of Mosier planned their own local food revolution. During the winter of 2010, ten Mosier residents took part in “Menu for the Future,” a reading course sponsored by the Northwest Earth Institute. They were inspired to do something to connect residents to their food and farmers. As was true with Gorge Grown Food Network, the group considered a number of options and decided to start a farmers’ market.

The market kicked off the first week of July 2011. Through advertisements and word of mouth, the group rounded up about ten farmers and other vendors to set up on Mosier’s main drag. Their chief obstacle was figuring out how to close the street for a safe pedestrian market space. Mosier officials had never dealt with street closures before, and the market’s planners quickly became discouraged.

As small town luck would have it, the volunteer fire department was called out the afternoon of the first market. On the way back from the call, one of the firemen recognized the market’s need, and voluntarily pulled the fire truck up to the street, effectively closing it to traffic and starting a tradition that continues today. During the high desert’s summer heat, the firemen set out their portable water supply as a wading pool for kids to splash in.

Emily Reed, one of the market’s founders, says the Gorge Grown Mobile Market became “the anchor store” of Mosier’s market. About 200 people attended each farmers’ market—a considerable number, considering that Mosier’s total population rings in at 421. Between 10 and 14 vendors regularly set up booths.

Reed is documenting Mosier’s experience with the farmers’ market, and she has presented the results of the market’s first year at the OSU Small Farms Conference. She reports that other Oregon towns are eager to read about their market and replicate its success.

Read more about Gorge Grown Food Network, the Mobile Market and the Gorge’s new crop of farmers’ markets on p. 26 of the summer issue of Edible Portland.

Ecodistricts bring new life to North American cities

Jun 192012
 

By Rob Bennett

Last month, leaders from Austin, Bellingham, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Guadalajara (Mexico), Mountain View, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Vancouver (B.C.) gathered at Ecotrust in Portland for the first-ever EcoDistricts Institute, a meeting to examine neighborhood-scale development projects in each of their cities.

The leaders at the institute are all developing EcoDistricts, which are also known as “green neighborhoods” or “green districts.” EcoDistricts integrate green buildings and smart infrastructure such as energy, water, waste, recycling, transportation with community action and civic entrepreneurism. EcoDistricts can be established within brownfield redevelopment areas, campuses or existing neighborhoods.

Ecodistricts are spread across the continent. Tatiana Mac/Portland Sustainability Institute.

For the participants in the institute – which was funded by generous grants from the Blackstone Ranch Institute and Ecoworks Foundation – being on the forefront of a new era of urban innovation isn’t enough. They want to go faster, and that’s why they came to Portland. Each had an interesting story to tell:

  • Austin is redeveloping a former industrial parcel on the southwest edge of downtown into a mixed-use neighborhood with affordable, dense housing, a new central library, improved transit and preservation of a historic art deco power plant.
  • Bellingham is designing a new waterfront neighborhood on the site of an old paper mill.
  • Boston’s newly minted “Boston Innovation District” is looking to reinvent itself as a center of advanced manufacturing and knowledge companies mixed with community amenities and housing.
  • Charlotte’s South End EcoDistrict is an emerging mixed-use neighborhood filled with innovative small businesses and housing in repurposed industrial buildings.
  • In Cleveland – a tale of two neighborhoods. On the west side, a tired inner-city neighborhood is in the need of new energy and investment, while on the east side, a new urban agriculture innovation zone is slated for farm incubation and related enterprises.
  • Guadalajara’s residents of the Vallarta Sur neighborhood rejected a proposed elevated highway that would split their neighborhood, and instead are transforming their railroad right of way into a “civic park” that will spur revitalization and the creation of a digital business center.
  • Mountain View – a Silicon Valley community endowed with a vibrant downtown and progressive technology companies – is poised to lead the way in sustainable corporate campus development that supports local businesses and a need for new housing.
  • Philadelphia’s South of South Neighborhood is an existing mixed-income area, seeing new growth due to its proximity to the center city.
  • San Francisco’s Central Corridor area is advantageously positioned for dense growth, new transit, district infrastructure and high-tech industry.
  • The University of British Columbia is redeveloping a portion of its abundant land holdings to create new mixed-use neighborhoods. The newest hub is Acadia, planned to accommodate dense housing, amenities, shops and services.

Ten cities, ten stories. The reason for these projects in North America– and dozens more like them around the world – is more apparent than ever: municipal and business leaders must find effective ways to repurpose neighborhoods to take advantage of the growing trends in urbanization (millions of people coming to a city near you in the coming decade) and the changing economy that places a premium on knowledge and innovation. According to leading local economists like Joe Cortright and organizations such as Preservation Green Lab and ArtPlace, the cities that focus on rehabilitating and building vibrant, green and diverse neighborhoods have the best chance of thriving in the future.

After spending three days with over 60 leading green city leaders, I left feeling exhilarated and convinced, more than ever, that we’re on the cusp of an urban sustainability revolution. We are certainly seeing evidence of such a revolution here in Portland. People continue to flock here. Why? We’ve adopted a culture that’s ultimately led to a 26 percent drop in per person carbon emissions since 1990 while the city and economy have grown. This culture has also given rise to a true green economy, and we are becoming known as the city that builds other green cities. We have five EcoDistricts here today, with two more coming online this year. That’s all in addition to the launch of a North American EcoDistricts Pilot Program this year as well.

Even with the economy struggling to rebound and cities facing unprecedented pressure to do more with less, this year is shaping up to be a busy one for the green cities movement.  The timing couldn’t be better.

Rob Bennett is executive director of the Portland Sustainability Institute.

FoodHub builds a bridge over the urban-rural divide

Jun 132012
 

“We are out on the farm; we’re out in the country. It’s really helpful to have technology that connects us to the cities to be able to sell.”

That’s how folks at Unger Farms explained the benefit of using FoodHub to reach wholesale food buyers in the Portland metro market. Functioning much like an online dating website, FoodHub offers an online directory and wholesale food marketplace that helps local producers and wholesale food buyers find each other, connect and do business. Indeed, opening market access to far-flung rural producers has always been one of Ecotrust’s goals and the reason we founded FoodHub.

The numbers on FoodHub’s rural activity, to date:

  • More than 20% of FoodHub’s membership in its six core states (OR, WA, ID, MT, AK and CA) is based in counties in which at least 30% of the population lives in rural areas.
  • 55% of rural FoodHub Members are sellers, 82% of which are farmers, ranchers, or dairies. Remaining sellers include breweries, wineries, fishermen, processors/manufacturers or producers of specialty products.
  • 30% of rural FoodHub members are buyers, of which 27% K-12 or Pre-K schools or school districts.

FoodHub Does the Legwork

FoodHub offers producers of all types a shortcut to finding potential buyers and reaching the right contact at target companies. Because FoodHub buyer memberships are open only to wholesale food buyers at restaurants, retailers, schools, hospitals and other institutions, the FoodHub member directory is a goldmine of highly qualified contacts, accessible 24/7 to any registered seller. Savvy producers leverage the technology to streamline the mundane and tedious parts of marketing and sales – determining the right contact, researching potential buyers’ needs and logistics, etc. – thus shortening the path to real relationship building. Those time-savers are particularly important given the sun-up to sundown demands of production.

“Any time we spend in the office is precious,” said Cassandra Timms of Deck Family Farm in Junction City, Oregon. “I think the biggest challenge for our farm is the time it takes to solicit the sales. On average I spend about 10 minutes a day on FoodHub. It has opened doors by word of mouth to chefs who have tried our products and then referred some of their friends to our farm,” she said. “We didn’t have to do the footwork or cold call them when they don’t have the time – they were just referred to us. That makes it worth those 10 minutes a day.”

New and beginning farmers and ranchers use FoodHub to leap up the learning curve and build their direct customer base quickly. New farmer Todd Birzer of Food Forest Foods in Beaverton, Oregon, explains: “I underestimated how much time and effort it would take to find buyers. I didn’t know some of the people we’ve been selling to and I wouldn’t have found them on my own. It was great to have an organized list of potential buyers, and be able to search for and contact them through FoodHub. I don’t know how else I would have done it.”

Members have also used FoodHub to glean market demand information and refine their product offerings as a result. Phil Greif of pd Farms in Elgin, Oregon, said, “We’re not planting more crops; instead we’re planting more of the crops that grow better here. We used to raise 30 different varieties to take to farmers’ markets. Now I grow 16 crops that do really well here and I sell it all because of the connections I’ve made on FoodHub.”

FoodHub and the White House Rural Council

All these stories and more will be shared by FoodHub’s director, Amanda Oborne, at a Forum on Regional Innovation in Rural America, to be held at the White House on Wednesday, June 13th. Oborne was invited to demonstrate FoodHub for members of the White House Rural Council and USDA Rural Development to show how the site is being used by rural producers to reach wholesale food buyers both in their own communities and in urban population centers.

The White House Rural Council was created by executive order last summer and is focused on facilitating job creation and economic development by increasing the flow of capital to rural areas, helping open new markets for rural communities, creating workforce development opportunities, and expanding telecommunications, among other activities.

Rural Economic Development via FoodHub

Does FoodHub help drive economic development or create and retain jobs in rural areas? Based on the anecdotal stories from our members, we certainly believe so. Data to answer that question more comprehensively will be researched this fall thanks to funding from a USDA Rural Business Opportunities Grant (RBOG).

In the meantime, we do know that rural FoodHub members who responded to our 2011 Annual Membership Survey pegged the economic value of new connections made on FoodHub at between $200 and $20,000 last year. That’s a great early indicator of FoodHub’s success at opening market access and helping catalyze the financial viability of rural producers.  More generally, as a technology innovator in the growing local food sector, FoodHub has helped propel the industry forward and created opportunities for rural communities to realize the economic benefits of building robust regional food economies. Although the impact is difficult to quantify, we believe there is ample evidence to suggest the contribution from regional food systems is significant.

“Retail Agriculture” Captures $8 Billion Industry

In research funded by the Farm Credit Council, Alan Hunt & Gary Matteson coined the term “Retail Agriculture” to describe diversified agricultural production that leverages primarily direct channels such as farmers’ markets, CSAs, farm stands and others to sell differentiated products to local buyers. Those products may be differentiated based on product type, production method, value-adding, branding/product information, marketing channel diversification, or a combination of these strategies.[1] Data from the 2007 Agricultural Statistics Service shows the combined total of organic, direct, and “local” sales, a reasonable proxy for Retail Ag, are estimated at $8 billion. That total is higher than the combined sales of commodities cotton and rice!

As Matteson explains, economic impact for this sector has been difficult to quantify based on the available data because the USDA tracks commodity products rather than marketing channels. “If the direct-to-consumer marketing channel were counted as if it were a commodity product, then it would be the fifth most common farm activity by number of farms.”[2]

At FoodHub we find Retail Ag to be a useful term in that we primarily serve small to medium sized producers of the type included in its broad umbrella – those who are responding to consumer demand for “local”, “regional”, “good”, “clean”, organic, grass-fed, pastured, humanely-raised or other niche specifications – and often leveraging technology and multiple channels of distribution to reach them. FoodHub doesn’t dictate a definition of “local” to its buyer members, nor does it limit seller membership based on production practice, but rather makes product attributes transparent and provides robust search and filtering tools to allow members to find and connect to good potential partners. The term allows us to quantify the total economic impact of this emergent group.

Local Food is a Regional Economic Driver

In its 2010 paper, Local Food Systems: Concepts, Impacts and Issues, the USDA cites empirical research that has found that expanding local food systems in a community can increase employment and income in that community[3]. Studies suggest the economic impact of regional food systems are most likely felt in the form of income and employment growth, particularly where import substitution – either of regional food products or of regional food services such as processing – results in more money staying within the region as opposed to being diverted to products or services bought outside the region.

These findings align with Ecotrust’s own study examining the economic benefit of regional procurement. In the 2008-2009 school year, Ecotrust examined the economic impact of bringing more regionally produced food into school cafeterias. With private grant funding, the Ecotrust Farm to School Program invested an additional seven cents for every meal served in two Oregon school districts. During an initial 12-week period, $66,193 was invested for the express purpose of buying local foods for the lunch room. This initial investment inspired $225,869 in total local food purchases.

Ecotrust analyzed the economic benefit of having $225,869 circulate throughout the Oregon agricultural economy and found that, in addition to the initial 241% return on investment, the $225,869 had an economic multiplier effect of 1.87, which suggests that every dollar spent on local school food encourages an additional $.87 of spending amongst suppliers and households. We were further encouraged to find that  resources used to buy school food ended up affecting or showing up in 401 of 409 economic sectors within the Oregon economy.[4] Since FoodHub’s launch in 2010, it has become one of Ecotrust’s primary means of helping K-12 and Pre-K school foodservice directors access local product.

The Mission: Fresh, Delicious, Local Food Everywhere

The mission we are on at FoodHub is to leverage technology to make it easy for local producers to connect with wholesale buyers in their food shed in order to build robust regional food economies. We believe doing so will result in financial viability and success for producers of all kinds, driving economic development and job creation, especially in the rural communities that are home to agriculture, and attracting new and beginning farmers and ranchers to the field. For individual producers already using FoodHub, the benefits are clear: time savings and profitable relationships.

Perhaps most importantly to all of us who eat, FoodHub helps make it possible for consumers in the Western US to enjoy fresh, delicious food anywhere they go by connecting the restaurants, schools, hospitals and groceries in their area with local producers.

 

 

[1] Hunt & Matteson, “The Emergence of Retail Agriculture:  Its Outlook, Capital Needs, and Role in Supporting Young, Beginning, and Small Farmers”, 2012.

[2] http://www.fb.org/index.php?action=newsroom.focus&year=2012&file=fo0402.html

[3] USDA Economic Research Service (2010). “Local Food Systems Concepts, Impacts, and Issues.” Economic

Research Report No. (ERR-97) 87 pp, May 2010.

[4] http://www.ecotrust.org/farmtoschool/Kaiser-Report_FINAL_110630.pdf

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