Buying local foods a recipe for growth

[jay]

In the Youngstown, area we now have The Lots of Green Market Gardener Training Program that will train interested Youngstown residents in environmental and business aspects of sustainable market gardening.  The goal is to teach practical agricultural techniques and small business development. 

[irishbobcat]

Why Not Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley?

Buying local foods a recipe for growth
Panel wants to link farmers, consumers
Monday, February 14, 2011  02:51 AM
By Mary Beth Lane

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

LANCASTER, Ohio - Imagine eating locally grown food, saving farmland and strengthening the agricultural economy in Fairfield County - and doing it all at once.

That's the future that regional planners envision. Now, an advisory group is beginning to discuss ways to make it happen.

The group includes regional planners and residents; economic-development directors for the county, Lancaster, Pickerington and Violet Township; and farmers, butchers and other business people, including representatives of Fairfield Medical Center.

The group met for the first time on Feb. 1 and plans to meet monthly. Their goal is to increase popular interest in buying locally grown meat and produce, preserve farms and help the regional economy, said Holly Mattei, executive director of the Fairfield County Regional Planning Commission.

Story continues belowAdvertisement Fairfield County's interest in finding ways to connect the local-food movement to economic development follows a report issued last year by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.

The report found that the central Ohio economy would benefit from growing and selling more locally produced meat, produce and other food. But to do it successfully, the region needs more food processors, better distribution and ways to help local-food businesses.

Mattei said she hoped the Fairfield County work will build on that by identifying the barriers between consumers who want local food, the farmers who produce it and the processors and retailers who would prepare and sell it.

The interest appears to be growing. Kenyon College, in Knox County, has been buying and serving locally raised food to its students since 2004.

Seasonal farmers markets appear in Pearl Alley in Downtown Columbus and dot other city neighborhoods and suburbs. More restaurants are buying their food locally, and more people are buying their Christmas hams from nearby pork farmers.

Bay Food Market, a fixture on S. Maple Street in Lancaster since 1932, is known for its meat counter stocked with local products. Owners Karen Crutcher and her two brothers buy from livestock farmers in Fairfield County and surrounding counties, butcher at Bay Packing and sell fresh cuts of meat to local customers at their market.

"It all ties together," Crutcher said. "I buy local, the livestock farmers buy local. It all impacts the local community."

It is her interest in those food and economic links that prompted Crutcher to volunteer on the advisory group.

The Fairfield County Regional Planning Commission is directing the work. The commission received a $5,000 grant from the Center for Farmland Policy Innovation at Ohio State University and used it to hire an intern, who will work full time on the plan, and to pay printing and other expenses.

The commission also has enlisted help from OSU's city and regional planning program. Students in a spring-quarter undergraduate class will be assigned to help write the plan using research by the advisory group, Mattei said.

The research includes surveying the county's farmers - including the interested local Amish enclave - to find out what they grow now or could grow; asking Fairfield Medical Center, school districts and other institutions about their interest in buying local; and identifying food processors, distributors and retailers to bring the food to market.

Crutcher hopes that the discussion will interest more people in buying locally produced foods.

"It's hard to get people to change their habits," she said. "They're used to going to a chain store to get everything in one place. How do you break that habit?"