Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Variety of local food efforts find home at Leopold Center

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2012

 

The Leopold Center is funding eight new competitive grants in the Marketing and Food Systems Initiative (MFSI) this year, which means that more than $250,000 will support local food projects. The new projects range from shared-use kitchens and small meat processors to the kinds of machinery and skills these farmers need to scale up their operations.

But that’s not the only work that will be done on local food projects. A variety of smaller projects are being funded by MFSI and the new Local Food and Farm Initiative (LFFI), both coordinated by Craig Chase.

“These projects address critical short-term needs to build a strong local and regional food system in Iowa,” Chase said. “There’s a lot of momentum with the growth of farmers markets, farm-to-school programs and CSA producers, and this work complements those efforts.”

Below is a summary of these projects and who’s doing the work. Grant amounts vary, adding up to about $40,600. Funds are from the Leopold Center’s MFSI program, or allocated by the Iowa legislature for the LFFI program. In many cases the grants leverage existing funds from other sources.

  • The Volunteer Center of Story County and Prairie Rivers of Iowa RC&D will continue a pilot school garden at Kate Mitchell Elementary in Ames and launch a second garden in Ames at Sawyer Elementary School.
  • Practical Farmers of Iowa will interview 25 growers and wholesale fruit and vegetable buyers for a case study, recommending strategies for farmers to improve their success in this market.
  • Women, Food and Agriculture Network will train 12 farm interns and their mentors, who will work at Soper Farms in northwest Iowa and the Wallace Centers farm in southern Iowa during the 2012 growing season.
  • Healthy Harvest of North Iowa and Prairie Winds RC&D are hosting a workshop to explore development of a food hub in the Mason City area.
  • A student in the ISU Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture will look at ways to establish a permanent funding mechanism for the LFFI program.
  • ISU Horticulture professors will study food hubs that aggregate products for distribution into wholesale markets and look at case studies of two existing food hubs in Iowa.
  • The Midwest office of the National Center for Appropriate Technology will work with the Des Moines School District on a summer school lunch program that uses more locally-grown products.
  • A graduate student from Tufts University is developing a “food regulations at a glance” publication for Iowa farmers.

Chase also worked with his local foods team to plan an April 3 Local Food Summit in Ames. The day-long planning session looked at six focus areas in the Iowa Local Food and Farm Plan, developed by the Leopold Center in 2010. The goal of the event is to determine “next steps” for the Local Food and Farm Initiative program in Iowa.

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2012