REGIONAL FOOD SUSTAINABILITY PROJECT

"I don’t know why Windham Country couldn’t feed itself."

Paul Harlow, Westminister farmer, 24 October 07, Windham Farm Bureau forum on Agriculture and Global Warming

 

From its founding in June, 2005, Post Oil Solutions has placed a special emphasis upon regional food sustainability. Thus, we have organized community gardens in Brattleboro, the POS Winter Farmers’ Market, a CSA in Wilmington, semi-annual localvore challenges and the Windham Localvores, the (Re)learning to Feed Ourselves workshop series, an Eat Local Pledge Campaign, and a Local Food Action Conference. (see wwwpostoilsolutions.org for further details)

This has been a good beginning. But in order to advance our work to the next level, we created the Regional Food Sustainability Project in the Fall, 2007. The RFSP will expand upon the kind of projects that POS has already initiated, as well as introduce new projects that will help create the infrastructure necessary to be regionally food self-sufficient.

To take on this ambitious program, however, it has been necessary for POS to institute several organizational changes:

  • To form a Leadership Council;
  • to become a 501c3;
  • to apply for foundation grants to fund a full-time Food Sustainability Coordinator to coordinate efforts around realizing a Regional Food Sustainability Center (see below);
  • to appoint a full-time volunteer Executive Director;
  • to supplement paid and volunteer staff with work-study students and VISTA volunteers

The RFSP projects that we envision include:

  • Independence Garden Campaign (modeled after the "Victory Gardens of WWII), encouraging everyone in the region to have a garden and root cellar;
  • neighborhood and community gardens and root cellars; container gardens in urban areas.
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  • community gardens and food storage facilities run by and for low-income people, to serve the region’s food shelves;
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  • year-round workshops in gardening, preserving, storing, and preparing whole foods;
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  • summer & winter CSAs in communities and institutions throughout the region;
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  • year round farmers' markets;
  • expanding the farm-to-school and localvore programs to include not only greater consumer commitment to local foods, but to also develop such projects as a volunteer corps to help farmers, staff food shelf community gardens, etc.;
  • working with area schools—particularly the Regional Career Centers in Brattleboro and Springfield—to develop agriculture programs and curriculum;
  • working with area food co-ops and grocery stores to develop greater local food inventories;
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  • creating a multi-purpose Regional Food Sustainability Center that would house a community kitchen, grain & oil processing facilities, local food storage & distribution, a composting site, and social, meeting & educational space;
  • exploring the purchase of agriculture land, with help from the VT Land Trust;
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  • exploring the development of no- or very little interest loans for new farmers seeking to be producers for the local market; possibly the development of a farmers or agriculture bank or co-op for this purpose;
    •  and
  • providing support for the efforts of farmers who are experimenting with and introducing new sustainable crops.