About the Community Farm and Table Newsletter and Community Farm and Table AssociationTM
The Community Farm and Table Newsletter:
Our Goal...
To
provide a forum for local food growers, CSA farm members and
prospective farmers and locavores (buying food from farmers as
close to their home as possible) and restaurant and food
retailers who source from local producers. It's a place for us
to explore ideas, techniques and situations specifically
related to CSAs and local food production and consumption. We
work to make the newsletter appealing to anyone with a general
interest in organic farming practices, small farm
preservation, and sustainable agriculture.
Each
Issue...
Each issue of the newsletter features articles of special interest to CSA or other farmers, farm members, locavores and restaurant and food retailers who source from local producers.
Recent newsletter examples include advice for forming a core CSA group, holistic management, drip irrigation and crop rotation. Other articles on food safety, a CSA run by kids and how a chef/ restaurateur gets local farmers and their food at the dinner table with her patrons have been featured. Essays from CSA farmers, ag professionals, family farm owners. We share tips and techniques that have worked for CSAs and family farms. Reports on research, reviews of books, advice on Plowing the Web (the World Wide one, that is) are regular features.
The “Buy Local” trend is growing and so is “Eat Fresh- Buy Local”. It seems logical that local food producers, restaurants using local foods, retailers offering local foods and consumers wanting to support local food producers everywhere unite in their promotional efforts to collectively take better advantage of these two trends. Here's how: local food producers benefit by promoting consumer, restaurant and retailer support for all local food producers in the community. And getting consumers, chefs, restaurateurs and food retailers in every community to seek out more locally produced foods and encouraging other consumers, chefs, restaurateurs and food retailers to do the same will in turn bring about accelerated growth in the “Buy Local Food” trend. As more consumers, chefs and food retailers to do the same throughout their community, it can’t help but bring about accelerated growth for all local food producers. And as restaurants and food retailers promote their local food offering, they’ll help in the growth benefiting all local food producers and gain from it themselves as well.
As founders of the Community Farm and Table AssociationTM we invite you to share in the “Buy Local Food“ trend’s accelerated growth. Whether you are a farmer, CSA member, prospective farmer, locavore consumer, restaurateur or food retailer who source from local producers, you can help local food producers everywhere grow by becoming an active Community Farm and Table AssociationTM member. We’re confident that as we all promote the Association, display the Association’s logo and and use the Association’s promotional materials it will help increase profits for everyone involved.
As an example of the impact a united effort to promote increased support for sourcing local foods, consider what would happen if it resulted in every household spending just $10 a week doing just that. A study by the Virginia Cooperative Extension office, an educational outreach of Virginia Tech and Virginia State University, concluded in Virginia alone it would have a total economic impact of $1,650,000,000 per year! Even the most rural area of the state, southwest Virginia, would see $137,900,000 pouring in every year. Talk about an economic stimulus package a grass roots effort for “buy just $10 worth of local foods every week” could bring to every community! Imprinting such a message into the mind of every consumer, chef, restaurateur and food retailer is the main purpose of the Community Farm and Table AssociationTM.
We encourage you to ask your local news media to do a feature newspaper article and TV and radio news spots about the economic impact buying just a little more local food every week can have on your community. See such a newspaper article at www.tricities.com - June 14, 2009 pages.
