Communities Can…

With cooperation and support, motivated individuals can bring their communities together to solve local problems and overcome obstacles.  During our Agricultural Reclamation Act tour, we heard many suggestions for how communities could work towards an agricultural system that prioritizes local food production, processing, and distribution as a way to create thriving communities, healthy people, strong social character and land stewardship.

Here are some suggestions to get you started:

1.  Find ways to show how communities support agriculture and agriculture supports communities- demonstrate that family farms and ranches that they are important to your area:

• Engage everyone!  Effort has to come from consumers, producers, schools, processors, chefs, local institutions and public officials
• Resource pooling/clearinghouse for community support and investment in local agricultural economy
  Enliven and rejuvenate the Granges as a way to educate and engage community members
• Workshops, demonstrations and appreciation at Farmers’ markets

2.  Develop pathways that will enable young people to get on land so that they can farm and stay in the community:

• Senior farmers working with junior farmers on tracts of land where new farmers can lease smaller plots, develop a business and benefit from a mentorship and economies of scale
• Get kids of all ages out to farms
• Access to Financial Services that provide low-cost financial and business planning, help with information management and retirement and transition options for older farmers and ranchers

3.  Land-use Planning:

• Community and Regional planning to double the amount of farm and ranch acreage, instead of focusing all the efforts on urban expansion and development
• Develop organization to hold conservation easements of valuable farmland that limits liability and allows for collective participation
• Work on other mechanisms to preserve farmland

4.  Ask your City and County for support that will help the local agricultural economy:

• Promotion and Development of local markets
• Strong policy or parameters defining what local is
• Encourage Institutional Purchasing
• City and County support for farmers’ markets, such as year-round market locations
• Public investment in local food system infrastructure

5.  Realize opportunities for scaling-up agricultural businesses, niche markets, and the developing local food system:

• Institutional purchasing
• Farm to School
• Holons- ways to add on to existing farm businesses
• Legal alternative fiber crops
• Local herb production for animal husbandry/medicine
• Produce local/organic grain, high quality, community-based feed
• Local value-added processing facilities
• Distribution networks

6.  Help create ways farmers and ranchers to organize and cooperate so that they may share ideas:

• Ways to cooperate on transport, processing, marketing (animal & other)
• Farmer cooperation on pricing to keep prices fair and reasonable
• Increase % of food $ going to farmer and decrease % going to middlemen
• Develop clearinghouse of cooperative models that shows different structures and cost analysis

7.  Increase public awareness through broad-based education campaign:

• Knowing where your food comes from and why it is important
• What it costs to produce real food
• Debunk the myth of cheap food
• Costs of industrial food production
• What it means to be a farmer
• How different food production methods effect human health, community health, land health and animal health

8.  Provide other Community Education Opportunities:

• Chef training on using the local and seasonal products at culinary schools
• Classes on how to use and cook real food
• Butchery training- need to find people who are willing to cut meat, learn skill

If you would like advice or assistance in starting a conversation in your area around community development through food and agriculture and the revitalizing of local economies, contact us to find out how we can help.

Other Resources:

Check out some of the great ideas that communities across Oregon are developing and visit our Local Food Resources page to find more resources and information.

We have also put together a toolkit to help communities through the process of organizing food projects and making change in their localities.  You can download a copy of this great resource here>>>