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Local Matters receives a “Victory Aganist Hunger” Award
Monday, October 6, 2008
Celebrating outstanding efforts in fighting hunger through promoting or creating innovative farm to school programs, Local Matters, a nonprofit organization in Columbus, Ohio, which plays a key leadership role in ensuring that the entire community of Central Ohio has easy access to local, nutritious foods, was recently awarded a Victory Against Hunger Awards by the Congressional Hunger Center (CHC), Victory Wholesale Group, and National Farm to School Network.
“From California to Maine, we applaud the efforts and energy across the country of organizations like Local Matters who are working to increase nutrition in schools and provide children with lasting education in agriculture, health, and the environment. Each of the 25 nationally selected organizations, including Local Matters, has successfully worked to restore the connections among the cafeteria, classroom, and community,” said Marion Kalb, Co-Director of the National Farm to School Network.
“As witnessed by the quantity and quality of submissions, farm to school is moving to the center of the plate and demonstrates the ability we have as a society to provide a healthy meal for our children,” stated Ed Cooney, Executive Director of the Congressional Hunger Center.
“Local Matters is honored and humbled to receive this award and wishes to thank Senator Sherrod Brown’s office for nominating our organization,” says Local Matters Executive Director Michael Jones. “We look forward to continuing to promote healthy and nutritious foods for our school children through our continued support of the National Farm to School Network and by implementing our “Three Sisters Project, a part of our Local Food to School Program, in six local Columbus schools in January of 2009.”
The annual VAH Awards were established by David Kantor, President of Victory Wholesale Group, to recognize outstanding organizations in the United States that work to end hunger and improve nutrition and health at the local level. The National Farm to School Network is extremely honored to have the 2008 Victory Against Hunger (VAH) Award’s theme be Farm to School.
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This is truly awesome news. Great to see such high-level recognition, especially of such a young group. Great work, all!
Great work Michael, Susan and team!!! What an honor and kudos for your hard work. Look forward to hearing more about this and future projects.
wow, you guys! what a wonderful accomplishment!
Great news! Congratulations!
WOW. It’s amazing how people thatactually do so little, screw with local farmers by turning CSA into a comercial for profit venture, make promises to farmers and rarely keep them, can get awarded. Par for the course, do little of the ground work, get the awards….
Hi:
I’m saddened by this comment and have a pretty good idea of who it’s from…
I can only say that our body of work in our community stands on it’s own.
I would also encourage the writer of this note to give our office a call and present the concerns that you’ve listed in this forum in person so that we can address them and see how we can include you in our process.
Local Matters has pretty big shoulders (meaning we are open to legitimate feedback) and a very big heart (meaning we care deeply about our community) and will continue to do what we can to take a leadership role in ensuring that the entire community of Central Ohio has access to healthy, local food.
Wow.
That was unkind, to say the least. And decidedly ill-mannered. And my decision not to write more is a concession to the original poster’s gracious response.
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Seriously? What’s your name and what do you do? That’s a pretty boldly offensive statement to make about some pretty great people.
You’d rather they just sat back and did nothing, and cared about nothing, like most people do?
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Doh! The problem is, the farmers aren’t making the profit, the middle man is.
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Doh! The problem is, the farmers aren’t making the profit, the middle man is.
Again…
Seriously? What’s your name and what do you do? That’s a pretty boldly offensive statement to make about some pretty great people.
You’d rather they just sat back and did nothing, and cared about nothing, like most people do?
Isn’t Local Matters a non-profit? I seriously doubt they’re out to rake in as much money as possible just to screw with farmers.
Sounds like someone simply has an axe to grind.
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Doh! The problem is, the farmers aren’t making the profit, the middle man is.
Again…
Seriously? What’s your name and what do you do? That’s a pretty boldly offensive statement to make about some pretty great people.
You’d rather they just sat back and did nothing, and cared about nothing, like most people do?
Maybe you should read a little and see how a CSA works in MOST cases. It eliminates the middle man and benefits the farmers and the “group” or community that supports them directly. Retailing it is making a profit off of the farmers and the people that really do not understand how a CSA works….
The community gardens were around before local matters. The farmers markets were here before local matters. Talk to people that have been involved in both before they came along, you might be surprised what they have to say…..
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Doh! The problem is, the farmers aren’t making the profit, the middle man is.
Again…
Seriously? What’s your name and what do you do? That’s a pretty boldly offensive statement to make about some pretty great people.
You’d rather they just sat back and did nothing, and cared about nothing, like most people do?
Maybe you should read a little and see how a CSA works in MOST cases. It eliminates the middle man and benefits the farmers and the “group” or community that supports them directly. Retailing it is making a profit off of the farmers and the people that really do not understand how a CSA works….
The community gardens were around before local matters. The farmers markets were here before local matters. Talk to people that have been involved in both before they came along, you might be surprised what they have to say…..
If I’m understanding this correctly, it’s not like Local Matters is suddenly forcing any local farmers to participate in their program, and it instead seems like an opportunity for them to sell to Local Matters if they choose, and LM can then put the product out through their own CSA.
not sure I’m getting the problem here.
Why don’t you give some references or examples instead of just throwing insults around?
That would be more educational.
It would also be helpful to hear from Local Matters, about why they do things like they do. I have my own opinion, but this is an interesting issue that i think could use more coverage.
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Doh! The problem is, the farmers aren’t making the profit, the middle man is.
Are you a farmer, Homer? A farmer making no profit? Perhaps a better use of your time would be working on your arithmetic skills so you are able to earn a profit.
I don’t think you’re a real farmer, though. Just a big meanie.
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Doh! The problem is, the farmers aren’t making the profit, the middle man is.
Ah, so this is the argument.
If you want to eliminate the middle man, you’d better shut down the whole North Market. And every other market, for that matter. But I doubt the farmers will thank you, once they have to retail all their own produce.
In any event, as Core pointed out, they have the option of doing that now.
Dude, CSA is and always has been for-profit. Do you expect farmers to earn no profit?
Doh! The problem is, the farmers aren’t making the profit, the middle man is.
Ah, so this is the argument.
If you want to eliminate the middle man, you’d better shut down the whole North Market. And every other market, for that matter. But I doubt the farmers will thank you, once they have to retail all their own produce.
In any event, as Core pointed out, they have the option of doing that now. As far as I can tell, mothernatrsson is an sweet corn farmer in Pahokee, FL. They had a nice racket of importing corn to Ohio and still would if it wasn’t for that meddling Local Matters group. Zoinks!
That would be more educational.
It would also be helpful to hear from Local Matters, about why they do things like they do. I have my own opinion, but this is an interesting issue that i think could use more coverage.
I am not a “farmer”. I am an organic gardener and I do work some in the community gardens.
There are many examples of how a CSA is supposed to work. There is one I know of north of Chicago that people from the chicago area are members of. It started with a farmer and initially 60 shareholders(CSA participants). They give the farmer money in the spring to buy seeds and whatever organic fertilizer and equipment he may need. They in turn get fresh organic produce. This CSA has grown to over 600 members and has also funded buying the adjacent farm land to the original farm that the farmer owns. Now the CSA share holders own some of the land, work and volunteer on the farm, and get fresh biodynamically grown organic food. They now raise beef, pigs and goats and are contemplating a dairy operation as well. BTW, this farmer isn’t driving around in a Lexus, but his land is still his and he isn’t contemplating selling it to one of the numerous developers that would love to have it because of it’s proximity to Chicago. It has also kept adjacent land from being developed.
What local matters is doing is denying the farmers this seed money, making them take loans for the basics and denying the members the opertunity to participate directly in the farm. Get out of town for a day and get in the dirt. There are several farmers that have CSA’s that would love to have some if not all of the people local matters retails their CSA to as members. Why doesn’t local matters just point these people directly to a farmer instead of taking a profit? Wouldn’t that be a better service to the community and the farmers? They are a non-profit organization. They get donations. Why take money away from the farmers and the community? Oh, but that is the responsibility of the original non-profit OEFFA(Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association). That is what they would do. If you called them or went to their website you would get a list of al of the farmers in your area that have a CSA. OEFFA should just start their own CSA too and not send people to the farmers? Local matters isn’t interested in working with OEFFA because there is no MONEY in it……
Obviously, local matters is not making any of the farmers sell them produce. The ones that have CSA’s and have been doing tht for a few years now would love the support of the community. You know Community Supoorted Agriculture……
Since the posts regarding the “Victory Aganist Hunger Award” have gone far beyond our intent for sharing our good news with the community and has resulted in some interesting feedback and questions, I thought I’d take a moment to provide some insight.
The Greener Grocer is a for profit business owned by two of the partners of Local Matters, a nonprofit organization based in Central Ohio and whose mission is to play a leadership role in ensuring that the entire community of central Ohio has easy access to healthy, local food and to use food as a positive way to address many of the social, economic and environmental issues affecting our community.
The Greener Grocer represents a public face for our “Farm to Fork” (FF) program, one of the three programs that Local Matters created to accomplish our mission. Through our FF program, we encourage local, small and medium size farmers to grow more food crops using sustainable farming practices and then work to create market opportunities for them to sell their crops.
The Greener Grocer represents one of these market opportunities as we buy as much as 80% of our produce, in season, from local farms. We also spend much of our time at the store talking with our guests about the importance of supporting local farms and buying local products when they have the opportunity.
Last summer, we had many guests come into our store who wanted to be part of local CSA’s but could not because shares in most of the local CSA’s were sold out. We decided that we could fulfill the desire to provide our guests with a weekly bag of fresh produce from local farms (since we are already buying most of our products from the same farmers who were sold out of CSA shares) and decided to create an “Urban CSA” based on the notion of supporting locating farmers and providing great product from local farms for our guests.
We made this decision after checking in with all of the farmers that we buy from to be sure that they didn’t have any shares left to sell in their own CSA and actually directed our guests to these farmers before we initiated our program. Our logic was that the more local product that we can sell at our storefront, the more product our farm community could sell to us.
One of our values at the Greener Grocer from the beginning was that we would offer a fair price to local farmers for their products (far beyond what local grocery stores, like the Giant Eagle that might be coming to the Arena District, for example) and have actually spent a good amount of our time this summer helping the farmers that we purchase from to figure out fair market value for there products…even when it wasn’t advantageous for our store.
Prior to this flurry of posts, we were actually in the process of re-evaluating whether to continue to call our program an UCSA or simply a subscription series as our intent is not to confuse the public but is to fulfill a need that our guests have raised and to sell more local products.
The Greener Grocer is a for profit business (barely) and serves a huge role as proponent for local farmers. We have a close working relationship with many area partners, including OEFFA and will continue to do so as there is too much work to be done for any single player. I have a hard time following the logic that we are denying farmers “seed” money given that we are working to create more opportunities for them to sell their products, though, ironically, we have just begun talks with a few of our farmers about providing some monies for seeds, prior to next year’s growing season.
This has been a spirited, and hopefully enlightening debate. Local Matters appreciates the points of view that have been shared and would encourage each of you to join us in our work. There is plenty to go around. Our first year at the Greener Grocer has been an amazing learning experiece with more to come. So, perhaps our request is for the
“benefit of the doubt” and a recognition that we are trying to make a difference in the community through the power of food.
I also want to remind the readers of this blog that Local Matters “Farm to Fork” program is but one of three programs that we operate in Central Ohio to help provide easy access to healthy, local food and to use food as a positive way to address many of the social, economic and environmental issues affecting our community.
My request with any of you who have a need to post to this thread would be to call me at our Local Matters office at 614.263.5662 and let’s discuss your concerns or visit http://www.local-matters.org to learn about our other programs. Thanks to all for caring so much.
Michael Jones
Executive Director
Local Matters