Americorps volunteer aims to give Wallowa County’s community food system an extensive tune-up.
I recently moved to Wallowa County as a RARE (Resource Assistance for Rural Environments) Americorps volunteer. When people ask me what I’m doing here, I usually say something along the lines of “food systems stuff” or “community food work.”
Eating locally has exploded in popularity all over the country; everyone from hunger advocates to celebrities are jumping on the food movement boat. But what does it really mean to work with community food systems (CFS)? A food system is the long line of producers, distributors, and consumers that we transfer our food through. It is every step from seed to fork. When we talk about CFS, we’re asking how a certain community of people in a particular area grows, distributes, obtains, and eats food.
Food access is an important component. Can every community member get the food his or her family needs? Indicators like the distance from a grocery store, average cost of a meal, number of individuals below the poverty level, and SNAP (food stamp) participation rate. The benefits of residents accessing local food are manifold: it’s fresher, higher in nutrient content, and can often be less expensive when in season. If local food is more expensive, a healthy community food system includes efforts to ensure that all citizens can access it; that’s why both farmers’ markets in Wallowa County accept SNAP. One activity I’ll be involved in is helping the markets implement a SNAP Match program for the next year: up to 5 dollars of SNAP purchases at the market will be matched by donations to help lower-income residents purchase more fresh local produce.
According to a new preliminary statistical summary, Wallowa County has a food access insecurity rating of 40%, which means that the county has significant food access issues to face (a 100% rating would indicate no barriers to food access).
Another equally important component: Do farmers have access to markets for their food products? For market linkages, the data ranked Wallowa County at 44%, which means that considerations such as access to packing and processing facilities, the amount of direct sales taking place, access to cold/frozen storage, etc., could be significantly improved.
Although Wallowa County has a lot of room for improvement, residents have already taken some really important steps to tackle these issues: having a Community Food Assessment prepared in 2012 to tell the story of Wallowa County’s CFS; the establishment of a food council that periodically shares information about wins, opportunities and challenges; and a number of local organizations that are dedicated to working together on these issues.
My job isn’t to tackle all of these issues, but to hone in on four of them that have been identified by the Food Council as most important. In the past month, I’ve had the opportunity to work in a vibrant community garden with two different groups of children, I’ve attended two food preservation classes by the Magic Garden that taught me all sorts of tricks, I’ve listened to local farmers and ranchers talk about barriers and opportunities for local production at the Oregon Department of Ag meeting in Enterprise, and I’ve made educational materials about dry storage by compiling local knowledge from people who never stopped using root cellars. I know that Wallowa County’s community food system has huge potential; I feel really lucky to be able to add my energy, time and skills into the mix so that this community food system can keep growing.
Lauren Johnson recently moved from Utah to work at NEOEDD and she’s been gorging on Wallowa County Bounty ever since.
Originally Published in Wallowa County Chieftain
209 N.W. First Street
Enterprise, OR 97828
Phone: 541-426-4567