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What's happening with the Local Food and Farm Program?
Posted: January 15, 2012
The new statewide Local Food and Farm Program is moving ahead on several fronts, each led by people already working on similar programs throughout the state. Craig Chase, Iowa State University Extension farm management specialist and interim leader of the Leopold Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative, is coordinator of the new program approved by the Iowa legislature in late July.
“The Iowa Local Food and Farm Plan that the Leopold Center prepared for the legislature, and is the basis for this program, had 29 operational recommendations divided into six sections,” Chase said. “We’re looking at major barriers to developing a vibrant food system in Iowa and then at what we could do to eliminate these barriers.”
The six areas are: business development and financial assistance; processing; food safety; issues relevant to beginning, minority and transitioning farmers; program assessment and implementation of local food incentives. Leaders are assessing current challenges and successes, identifying what’s needed, and suggesting future activities. They will present a preliminary report to the legislature in early 2012.
“Some recommendations from the plan have been accomplished, such as adding a farmer member to the Iowa Food Safety Task Force. Others will require more attention, such as the food safety training that already has begun in northeast Iowa.”
Chase said aggregation, storage, processing and distribution of locally grown food are among the larger issues, but he’s confident those efforts will grow, too.
“We have a couple examples of food hubs, sometimes called aggregation points, where anyone who wants to provide products can do that, from conventional corn-soybean farmers looking to diversify for extra income to the five-acre strawberry grower interested in an institutional market,” he said.
Chase also will meet with a newly appointed Local Food and Farm Program Council in January. Members and the organizations they represent are: Maury Wills, Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship; Rick Hartman, Iowa Farmers Union; Warren Johnson, RC&Ds of the Natural Resource Conservation Service; Teresa Wiemerslage, local food industry; Andrea Geary, Regional Food Systems Working Group; and Barb Ristau, Iowa Farmers Market Association.
Source: Leopold Letter Winter 2011
