Help us market a price class that’s exclusively for food access programs--offering below distributor pricing to schools, food banks, church groups and others that feed those who are food insecure. We call this program, Good Food for All, and it’s our strategy to make high-nutrition whole grains, beans, and oilseed products part of rural economic development and food access–a strategy that’s a critical next step toward improving health outcomes among the poor in our region and to building regional ecomomies around local food production. We are looking for collaborators from Food Access Programs and Local Food Businesses, as well as funding to convene stakeholders and plan this concept.
Shagbark Seed & Mill, is currently piloting this price class–17% below wholesale–and Summer Food sites for kids, the Tri County Career Center, Local Matters in Columbus, Job & Family Services, Athens Health Dept./Live Healthy Appalachia’s Food Pantry Project, and Community Food Initiatives have already purchased grains, beans, whole grain bread, muffins, and cereal for their programs. Since 2011, when Shagbark Seed & Mill started pilotiing Good Food for All, we’ve learned that there is tremendous interest in accessing healthy grain and bean products for those who need it most. And in less than two months, more than $4000 worth of beans and crackers have been donated and sold to our Regional Food Bank and other food access programs. But to increase the potential impact of Good Food for All, we want to develop a partnership with food access programs and other businesses to brand the concept so it offers food from a variety of producers and proccessors in the region.
Our goal to enlarge this pilot is to raise $25,000 to develop the Good Food for All brand by convening food access and business partners to assess their capacity to buy and sell at this lower rate, and create the brandng materials necessary to move forward throughout the region. We want to include those who grow and process fresh fruits, dairy products, and vegetables so Good Food for All offers our region’s food access programs a complete line of locally produced food. By joining together, good quality food to schools and food access programs will create an enterprise strategy that can fill the plates set out by hunger programs with good grain, vegetables, dairy, fruit, beans and more.
Background
The Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative started this program with grain and bean crops because our mission is to build that value chain away from the commodity global system that has increasingly undermined rural economies, the environment, and the nation’s health over the last four decades. In its place, we envision regional scale high nutrition grain, bean, nut, and oil seed farms and processing facilities. That’s why we launched Shagbark Seed & Mill in 2010 in Appalachian Ohio, and are working with The Wingnuttery, a new start up for nut processing, and supporting Coyote Ridge Engineering’s R & D for pressing cooking oil from sunflower, grape, and pumpkin seed.
Staple grains and beans play a significant role place in our diet—through highly processed products that dominate
our plates, especially of the increasing low-income population, and through grain fed cattle in CAFOs (confined animal
feeding operations). Ironically, high nutrition varieties of these crops can account for up to 70% of a healthy diet; however,
give a poor family access to 70% of their calories from the current commodity crop system and the outcome is diabetes
and obesity. These crops account also the lion’s share of revenue in US agriculture dwarfing fruit and vegetables ten-fold.
Please contact us for more information about how you can help us take this step.
Contact-
Michelle Ajamian, Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative 740-590-1501 goodfooddirect@gmail.com