Hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of allium seeding season,
This is a reminder that we will have our next food&ag. working group meeting today at 5PM at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Bldg. G.
We'll be meeting to discuss "guerilla marketing" strategies for outreach.  Nancy Lee Wood has suggested folks bring their local phone books and ideas of locations/opportunities to engage the public around food issues.  Also a reminder that previous meeting notes are archived on the forum pages of the Council website - http://councilonsustainability.com

We wanted to pass along a number of links that are relevant to our past discussions within the Food&Ag working group:

Last week the USDA announced they have published a new Your Food Environment Atlas that compiles a broad set of data related to food at the county level... if you haven't seen the atlas yet you can check it out at:  http://www.ers.usda.gov/foodatlas/, the USDA also just released results of their first wide-scale Census of Organic Agriculture from 2008.

Common Security Clubs event - Facing the Economic Upheaval Together - Katie and I are planning on attending this event if others are interested in carpooling please let us know.

February 27, 1 - 5PM, The Paulist Center - 5 Park Street, Boston
A facilitators-training event. Who Should Come: People with experience in leading groups. No other expertise needed. We recommend coming in teams of 2 or more to make getting started easier. The Training: We will train you on our 5-session curriculum to get you started. It's simple, participatory and truly rewarding. The Trainers: Chuck Collins and Andrée Zaleska from the Institute for Policy Studies, and Alexa Bradley from On the Commons On-Going Support: We will provide you with all the materials you need, facilitation support and additional downloadable resources. Register here. FREE.

Attached are three email alerts from regional and national organizations (see each below):

• Let's Move Update - Improving Childhood Nutrition in the Next Decade
• Carrot Project - Funding for Small Farmers in the Northeast
• Slow Money - Campaign to include Slow Money in the 10 Ideas for Change to be presented to President Obama

Upcoming Council Dates

• March 11th:  3-5 PM - Quarterly Council on Sustainability Meeting at Bristol-Plymouth Regional Tech in Taunton

• April 27th - Sustainability Council Resource Conference for Businesses and Municipalities with keynote addresses by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute and Mark Sylvia director of Mass. DOER Green Communities Division and breakout sessions in the AM and PM.  This will be an all-day event held at BCC.  More info coming soon...

• Thursday June 10th - Quarterly Council on Sustainability Meeting - Location and Time TBA

and finally thought folks might enjoy this insightful post from Dr. Mercola about the health hazards of Corn Syrup consumption... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/sugar-may-be-bad-but-this_b_463655.html

Here are the meeting notes for the Food&Ag Working Group.  Our next meeting is Thursday Feb. 18th at 5PM at Bristol Community College, Bldg. G (meet in the atrium).

We'll be meeting to discuss "guerilla marketing" strategies for outreach.  Nancy Lee Wood has suggested folks bring their local phone books and ideas of locations to engage the public around food issues.

Interested in contributing to our series of letters to the editor? or joining the speaker's bureau?  Please contact, Derek Christianson, 508-992-1868.

Southeastern Massachusetts Council on Sustainability
Food & Agriculture Working Group

November 2009

Draft Vision: A robust regional food system that models food-security, local food production, thriving, economically viable farm businesses, and innovative connections between all stakeholders in the foodshed.

Goal: Increase Local Food Production Capacity

Actions:

• Develop or Market existing financing options (grants, loans, micro-finance)
• Educational Programming: develop presentation that can be presented to town councils, etc.  Promote existing educational programs such as SEMAP’s season extension workshop, BCC’s OAT program, etc.
• Increase Infrastructure: greenhouses, raised beds, land, etc.

Indicators of success for this goal:

• CSA memberships
• Farmers market activities
• # of community garden members
• # of Green houses
• # of Raised beds
• Money available to seed new projects

Goal: Innovating Marketing and Removal of Unnecessary Policy Barriers

Actions:

• Research/promote/support innovative marketing approaches such as mobile marketing, online farmers markets, subsidized urban CSA, etc.
• Need for promotion or development of a “Best Practices” Guidelines from state-level for local Board of Healths to provide guidance on farmers markets, etc. (promote more universal approach)

Indicators of success for this goal:

• # Farmers Markets increased
• # Direct sales to consumers
• More farmers participating in markets
• # of people accessing non-traditional marketing methods

Goal: Building Local Food Security Through Small-Scale Backyard/Community Garden Production

Actions:

• Support of existing initiatives
• Develop regional initiative/challenge, ala Local Food Challenge, Grow Your Nutrition, Homegrown Health to educate and inspire new growers
• Development of new urban community gardens

[This third goal seems to be part of the first two goals- indicators are contained within those categories]

Major areas to address to move region toward greater food security/local food production:

1. Education (one track for consumers another for producers)
2. Advocacy
3. Infrastructure/Capital

Immediate Actions for the Council In General:

• Sending out 25 word or so biographies of group members, including contact info, what you do, and key interest areas would be helpful way to leverage existing efforts (for example if you want to begin a film series in your town about food issues and another group member already runs such a series, natural to connect.)  This would be helpful for entire Council.
• More discussion time during Full Council Meetings