Community Food Security Coalition Farm to Cafeteria Conference

The strength of the movement to bring local, farm fresh food into cafeterias across the country was evidenced by the enthusiasm, passion and attendance at the conference this past weekend in Baltimore sponsored by the Community Food Security Coalition http://www.foodsecurity.org/2007conf/ .

It is going to take me a few days to digest what I learned from the people who spoke and the folks I was able to meet and speak to personally. For one, this is a movement whose time is now. With the signing of the 2007 Farm Bill just around the corner, there will be progress made, hopefully, in funding programs that support the move toward real food, grown locally, delivered within a distance that uses as little energy as needed and pays the farmer a fair price.

There is too much energy wasted moving the food supply across this country. Our distribution systems have gotten so large that food is traveling across the country when products being grown locally are readily available in season but ignored by the economy of scale that now prevails in the food supply.

We need to find solutions to create a two-tiered distribution of food, so that smaller producers can have access to end users that are close to their farms and distribution methods do not add exorbitant costs to product sold in smaller units.

I have faith that the time has come for this to happen.