tmills's blog

Local Matters' Director of Public Policy and Community Relations, Noreen Warnock, attended the 5th Annual Taking Root National Farm to Cafeteria conference in Detroit last month.

Here are some of her thoughts: 

This weekend was a great time to get dirty.  Many of you participated in the Market to Market ride from Hills Market to the North Market (or vice versa) and toughed it out through the rain and mud to celebrate local food.  Others of you (like me) also took the opportunity to get your seedlings into the ground and get your garden started. 

Being an apartment dweller I've had to find alternatives to the standard home vegetable garden.  I've been so impressed by the variety of options available to me.

We're excited to see so much great conversation going on around the food served in our school cafeterias these days.  The new TV show Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution is sure to stir some emotion from all sides.  British chef Jamie Oliver has "invaded" the town of Huntington, WV (declared the least healthy city in America, though not much different than many cities across this country) to confront the childhood obesity and diabetes crisis building in the city's schools.

Local Matters' co-founder Michael Jones was invited to participate in the creation of a local food assessment through the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission's Local Food Working Committee.  

The committee was given the task of assessing the local food infrastructure for the twelve county region that MORPC serves.  After six months of research and dialogue the draft of MORPC's local food assessment is now available for review and is attached to this post.  

Several barriers to getting local food into communities throughout Central Ohio were identified.  The final draft will be submitted by mid April and will help to guide.  Take a look and share your feedback!

The San Francisco-based urban farmer Jason Mark of Alemany Farm, who does double duty as a food journalist for Change.org and editor in chief of the Earth Island Journal, recently posted a great editorial piece on the Baker Creek Seed Catalogue.  

On February 9th the White House, in partnership with First Lady Michelle Obama,  announced the Let's Move campaign.  

The announcement states: 

First Lady Michelle Obama today announced an ambitious national goal of solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight and unveiled a nationwide campaign – Let’s Move – to help achieve it. 

As the 2010 Ted Prize winner, Jamie Oliver was given a chance to make one wish that would change the world and to do it in front of an audience that was eager to make his wish come true.  

His wish announced on February 10, 2010 was to teach every child about food in order to confront the health issues that plague our communities - childhood obesity, diabetes, etc. and set a course for a healthy future.