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PLAINVIEW, Neb. – If you know the farmer who raises your food, then you know your food. Northeast Nebraska RC&D of Plainview, representing six counties in the region, initiated a project called Farm to Family Connection, promoting locally raised food to consumers and institutions and studying innovative ways of raising awareness of food grown in the area by family farmers.
"The goal of the project is to bring the farmer and consumer together and create a working relationship that will benefit both," said project director, Sandy Patton. "The program will serve to educate the consumer and institutions and to motivate them to purchase more local food and farm products."
Farm to Family Connection builds upon an existing weekly radio show airing Thursdays on KKYA radio, 93.1 FM based in Yankton, SD, as a springboard to promote the local food message. Farms and rural businesses that have been featured on Farm to Family Connection radio over the past two years have been surveyed to analyze issues of awareness and distribution. The project also expands an existing web-based campaign and will create a toolkit next spring, that can be utilized by other farm groups, radio stations and family farm and direct marketing advocacy organizations across the country, to develop their own radio and web-based local food campaigns.
"When we buy and eat local foods, we know what we’re getting and where it came from," Patton said. "The farmer that grew the meat on our dinner table, the tomatoes in our salad, or the honey on our toast, lives in our area."
This project works with a number of organizations around northeast Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa in promoting local food not only directly to consumers, but also to institutions like hospitals, schools, nursing homes and local restaurants. Patton said, "Family farmers are the heart of our rural communities. Connecting the farm to the consumer and institution is a way of keeping our rural communities alive."
"We will be looking at new ways for farmers who are direct marketing locally raised food and products to reach out to consumers in our own region," says Crofton area farmer, Curt Arens, who is assisting Patton on the project. "Study after study shows that if they are given a choice, folks will always select fresh produce and food grown by local family farmers down the road who they know and trust."
The two-year project is funded in part by a grant from W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and is administered by Northeast Nebraska Resource Conservation & Development (RC&D), a partnership between USDA and our local non-profit organization. The local Farm to Family Connection project began Aug. 1, 2006 and will run through July, 2008.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
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