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.

Get a glimpse of all of PopTech’s social innovation fellows in this quick clip.

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.

Read the rest of Diane’s report on the Michigan Land Use Institute’s site.

The Senate passed the Food Safety Modernization Act on Monday.  Jon Tester, the farmer-senator from Montana, authored an amendment that allayed concerns it would have a negative impact on small farms.

Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser call it “the most important food safety legislation in a generation.”  Just Means has a summary of the amendment.  And Senator Tester’s floor speech makes a simple, compelling case for the benefits of buying food direct from farmers in your community.

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.

work picnic (11)
via David Clow on flickr

The Toronto Star sent Margaret Webb to find farms that produce the raw materials for junk food. The result of her search is a compelling and unsettling piece about the journey of food from field to factory to snack.

Ultimately, however, Webb articulates what many of us already know and are working toward in the way we eat, produce and distribute food:

Food is powerful. Change is possible with every purchase we make, in every link we forge between good food and good farming, and in every bite we take.

From Where they grow our junk food:

Follow the flow of food. That’s what any farmer will tell you. Because apples don’t grow in supermarkets.…to get to the root of the exploding obesity epidemic, I went in search of a junk food farm.

Such farms are not so easy to spot. No fields of Dorito bags waving in the breeze, no orchards blooming with soda pop, no soil bursting with 99-cent burgers.

read on

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.

We are grateful for cornucopia of photos on our site, many of which are the work documentary photographer Jason Houston, who writes:

I have been photographing farms and farmers in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts where I live for over a decade. I started this project because I believed that food and where it comes from and how it is made is one the most urgent, universally important issues our world faces today. And the more time I’ve spent on this work, the more I have come to understand…

read on and see more photos