If you’ve been keeping up with our blog or the travels of our founder, Erika Block, you probably know a little bit about Poptech. For the uninitiated, here’s a quick rundown: Each year Poptech gathers together a class of Social Innovation Fellows from around the world. Although they all come from vastly different backgrounds, the common denominator that the fellows share is the ability to build social ventures that have the potential to create significant change. Each sees a problem that’s large in scope, and is inspired to find the pressure points within systems that could turn their particular challenge into an opportunity.
In this spirit of innovation, Poptech fellows and other interested folks convene, talk and get down to work. During the annual Poptech conference in Maine, each fellow has the opportunity to articulate just why they find their chosen problem and solution so compelling.
Watch, listen and learn as Erika walks through how Local Orbit can leverage technology to change our food system, solving problems for farmers, chefs and food service purchasers — ultimately leading us to a system where more food is sourced locally. Local Orbit’s platform offers tools for people to source a greater percentage of their food through local and regional producers – and the impact that ripples outward, well beyond the food chain. It promotes healthier communities — physically, environmentally, and economically.
Local Orbit team members Becky Noffsinger and Patty Cantrell attended the Farm Routes to Prosperity Summit in Traverse City last month and I just had an opportunity to read Diane Connor’s report of the event. The region is well on its way to achieving its 10-year goal of increasing the resilience and doubling the value of the region’s local food and agricultural economy by 2019. With two recently-launched Local Orbit marketplaces in Benzie County, we’re please to provide the online infrastructure to help make this happen. We’re particularly excited by Rob Sirrine’s map of farm-to-school growth in the past six years. More please!
When Rob Sirrine, chairman of the Northwest Michigan Food & Farming Network, clicked on his favorite slide during his presentation to the third annual Farm Routes to Prosperity Summit, the audience responded with an appreciative “oooh!”
More than 100 people were there on Feb. 4, gathered in Traverse City to chart and plan for making more progress in the eat-local, buy-local food movement that is slowly but surely changing northwestern Lower Michigan’s farm and food economy.
The region is home to a unique, Lake Michigan-powered microclimate that supports a beautiful landscape of fruit orchards; tourism-related farm stands, wineries and breweries; and nearby fields of vegetables, livestock, and small dairies. Members of the Food & Farming Network—a diverse group of farm, nonprofit, health, community garden, land preservation, business, school, and economic development professionals—want to not just preserve it, but grow it.
Why did Dr. Sirrine’s slide show take their breath away? Because one of this MSU Extension educator’s slides showed a map with just one dot on it, marking the location of Central Grade School in the Traverse City Area Public Schools District. In 2004, that school launched the region’s first “farm to school” program, serving fresh, locally grown produce from area farmers in school lunches.
I had the pleasure of attending the Michigan Organic Food and Farming Conference last weekend and was inspired by the vision and integrity of farmers I met who’ve built successful businesses, as well new farmers who are just starting out. Highlights included an intergenerational panel that addressed needs and resources for incubating new farmers, a session on creative strategies for farmland acquisition, and a panel about Michigan Thumb Organics (MTO).
MTO is a cooperative of experienced farmers whose individual members sell organic commodities crops like soy and corn. They’ve come together to expand and diversify sustainable local food production. Check out Chris Bedford’s video for their story.
If we want an ecologically sound local food system that’s available to everyone, we’ll need to figure out how to reinvest in…lost infrastructure. Small farmers can’t do it on their own. (Tom Philpott)
Philpott is a new farmer who left a career as business writer five years ago. Newsweek published his recent essay on the relationship between government farm subsidies, the cost of food, and how these funds can be better used to support small farms.
He looks at the consolidation of our food system; the loss of local food processing infrastructure; and the environmental, health and safety costs that have been enabled hundreds of billions of dollars in agriculture subsidies.
I’ve been looking at visualizations of local food systems and ran across Aaron Newton’s 2007 post on the bullseye diet. It’s one of the clearest, most pragmatic approaches to being conscious about eating food that’s produced closer to home – while taking into account the realities of our global food system. Making good food choices can be complicated – but this approach simplifies the process.
Newton, who co-wrote A Nation of Farmers, …needed a conceptual way to organize my increasingly entangled way of thinking about local food…imagine sourcing your food as a good game of darts where the dart board represents your geographical region. A great shot ends up in the bullseye- your own home- eating food you have grown yourself. As you move outwards on the board, your next nearest food source is usually your best bet. How much food can you grow in your neighborhood? How about buying food from a farmer just outside of town? Can you get other foods from your surrounding region? How much can you obtain from within your own state? The idea is that the closer to home – the closer to the bullseye – the better.
Sharon Astyk, co-author of A Nation of Farmers, adds: Like a darts game, you won’t always hit your circle. But with practice, you can get a little closer every time. The more food you create in your community, the better off we all are.
For all the grumbling you do about your weekly grocery bill, the fact is you’ve never had it so good, at least in terms of what you pay for every calorie you eat. According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Those savings begin with the remarkable success of one crop: corn…But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs.
A decades long conversation about the sustainability of our food system has moved from books and blogs and food activist listservs into mainstream media. Wherever you look there’s an article, a movie, a TV or radio segment about our broken food system, about food safety, about how our eating habits are making us sick.
And about how much organic lettuce the White House Garden is producing. read on…
CNNmoney.com recently showcased community campaigns aimed at supporting local, independent businesses through the recession.
With $2 bills and “buy local” promotions, towns are launching their own stimulus efforts to keep local merchants in business….The names and details vary, but the campaigns all share one goal: Educating shoppers about the power their spending has to shape their local business landscape.
There are many reasons we buy local. It’s a given that we get healthy, fresh, great tasting food – from producers we know and trust. Equally important is the impact our spending choices have on local economies.
According to the Michigan Department of Agriculture, if each household in our home state of Michigan started spending $10 per week of their grocery bill on Michigan products, we would keep more than $37 million in Michigan, each week. That’s almost $2 billion per year.
(Did you know? Michigan has the second most diverse agricultural output in the country, after California. It’s also among the top five states in the production of over 30 different types of crops, and ranks first in the production of tart cherries, blueberries, navy beans, cranberry beans, and black turtle beans. Agriculture is the second largest industry in Michigan and, unlike manufacturing, has shown steady growth through the recession. The sector is expected to create 12,000-23,000 new jobs in the next 2 years.)
The dollar you spend at a local business contributes three times more to the local economy than the dollar you spend at a chain store. That’s three times more income, three times more jobs, and three times more tax benefits. It’s called the local multiplier effect.
YES! magazine lays out the numbers in this downloadable poster , demonstrating how buying local can … make your money count—more than once.
Welcome to Local Orbit! A little more than 18 months ago we started talking with local food producers, chefs and eaters about creating a better food chain.
Everyone we talked with was hungry for food that comes from farmers and artisan food producers they know and trust. Many were interested in spending a larger share of their food dollars in their own communities. Everyone had a story about limited or inefficient access to locally produced food. read on…
