You know when I talk about rural economic developments, from my perspective you look at things like
putting the culture back in agriculture, right, and part of that is local foods and local food
traditions that exist, and then it's also the other big piece of that, I mean it's arts, it's the arts
and music piece. It's the things that attract people to a community and make them want to stay
and make them want to put down roots. Welcome to the 347th installment of Ear to the Ground,
the Land Stewardship Project's podcast on family farming, regenerative agriculture,
community food systems, and local democracy. I'm Brian DeVore, editor of the Land Stewardship Letter.
Before you know where you're headed, you need to figure out where you're at. During the past few
years, I've spent a fair amount of time staring at large sheets of paper taped to walls in western
Minnesota community centers and other venues. These sheets of paper document what assets local
communities possess in order to develop food systems that feed local people while supporting
local farms and other business enterprises. The information populating these community food asset
maps has been provided by farmers, small business owners, and local government officials, among
others. These people were invited to supply that data by the Land Stewardship Project, which during
the past few years has been busy launching a community food systems initiative in the upper
Minnesota River Valley. When taken as a whole, what's striking about these asset maps is how many
so-called community food resources are already present in the region. There are grain and meat
processing facilities, commercial kitchens, aggregation warehouses, and cold storage spaces,
as well as grocery stores, schools, and restaurants willing to provide locally produced meat, dairy
products, fruit, and vegetables to eaters. But all these dots on the map are a little like disparate
community food islands floating in a sea of commodified corn and soybeans. What's become
clear to LSP and our allies in this work is that in order to create what food system analysts can
meter calls a community food web, connections need to be made between these isolated islands.
For example, we need to figure out how to efficiently haul all that meat or produce from
all those local farms to the grocery stores, schools, restaurants, and individual eaters who
want that food. That's why LSP has been following up those asset mapping sessions with meetings where
farmers can connect with other links in the food chain. LSP organizers have also been working with
allied organizations, local businesses, and local governments to brainstorm ways to make the best
use of the food assets already present and to determine what can be done to fill in the missing
pieces. One of the people who's been doing this work is Scott Demuth, a food systems organizer for
LSP who lives in Granite Falls, a town of around 2,700 people that sits on the Minnesota River
in the western part of the state. On a recent summer evening, Scott and I got together to talk
about LSP's food systems work. While nighthawks circled overhead and trains hauling commodities
boomed through town, Scott talked about what the community asset mapping project revealed and some
of the ripple effects, economic as well as social, that can occur in a community when it focuses on
building a food system not based on exporting raw commodities. He also shared how, as a resident of
the area, building a thriving food and farm system hits him on a personal level. So Scott,
we were talking the other day and you were talking a little bit about some of the local,
the food systems work that LSP is doing and it's something that we've kind of relaunched in the last
couple of years here in western Minnesota, kind of in the upper Minnesota River Valley.
And one of the things that I think is really interesting and really useful is the one of
the ways you kind of started out relaunching some of this work was you did something called
community food asset mapping. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and one of
the things that I think tied in really nicely with that was I think he worked with Ken Meader,
who's a food systems analyst and I've talked to him quite a bit. And he really, to kind of set the
stage, he, and you know, correct me if I'm wrong in this, but he kind of did an analysis of what
economic value would we be getting if, for example, we just bought a certain percentage of food
locally. It doesn't take 100% of the food to be local or whatever. It was like a pretty outsized
impact of just whatever. And I don't know if you can remember some of those statistics or some of
those numbers, but I was really struck by that and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit
about that. Yeah, so yeah, when we started this project, I mean we, I mean we actually started
right shortly after the pandemic, stuff, you know, started reopening. And so, you know,
we kind of started initially with, you know, interviewing members and doing some community
listening sessions. And a lot of that was really just to, you know, hear from members and folks in
the community about what they wanted to see. And so, yeah, I think the thing that, you know, with
that Ken Meader really brings to the table with this too is around community food webs and this
idea of not just the economic value, but also just the social values that also go along with
local foods. You know, the analogy I like to kind of point out a lot locally at least is, you know,
I first moved rurally from Minneapolis, you know, I was getting, I think getting my oil changed and
I was getting it done locally. It was probably, geez, probably 15 bucks more than if I just like
went to one of the near towns, Marshall or Wilmer. And so it's like, why don't I just go there? But
kind of just like dig into this idea of like why, you know, why do people pay more for the local
service and talking with people about it. And a lot of it's, you know, people are paying what they
want to see around here. I mean, one, they're supporting their neighbors. I mean, that's a big
part of it. But it's also something that they want to have. They want the convenience of having it
here in town versus having to drive 30, 45 minutes to go get your oil changed and to get other car
services. So it's not just about the oil change. It's also having, you know, someone who can repair
your car, having all these other services here in town. And yeah, you pay a little bit more for it,
but that's also someone who's your neighbor. Their kids, you know, are going to the same school as
your kids. Just fascinating to me that that same idea hasn't quite translated over to food yet.
Yeah. After the pandemic, I think that's when people have started to think about that a little
bit more. It's just a little bit more immediate. I mean, I think it was the first time many Americans
experienced things like going to the store and not having particular items available, not just
because they weren't in stock, but because it might not be in stock again, right? With, you know, some
of the shutdowns that happened and supply chain issues, people started, I think, just taking it
a little more seriously about where their food is coming from. And that's kind of where that stuff
started from was for us, at least when it comes to local foods, I think there's a lot of pieces
that are just part of our LSP values, you know, soil health, having and supporting more farmers
on the land. But I think there's this other big piece of our mission that's also about building
strong rural communities and local foods are such a big part of that. And yeah, the Ken Meader
piece too, that goes along with that is, I mean, he did, I don't know the exact numbers, I might get
this wrong, but he did some math and looked at just our population out here. And if every person
was spending $5 a week on local foods, I think the impact was somewhere around, I want to say,
$50 million just by that alone, which that's a huge economic impact for a region, just with a pretty
small lifestyle change. And we're also in an interesting time where you have food prices are
rising for everyone. And I don't know if it's always going to stay this way. But we're in this kind of
interesting moment where local foods, at times are pretty competitive price wise with other products
that are out there. I know for local milk right now, it's pretty comparable gallon to gallon
compared to buying it off the shelves. And that's not true for everywhere. I mean, it's, you know,
there's a lot of things baked into that. But just, yeah, it's an interesting moment to be in
the local food scene and to have this program be starting up at that time. So yeah, that's that
whole outsized impact of like you said, just $5 a week could produce this incredible kind of ripple
effect in the economy. I find that really striking in that like, so instead of chasing big CAFOs
and methane digesters, this is really what we should be chasing is some of these kind of changes
in the local food system. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the, you know, I think it's the dollar
impact of that. It's also just the community impact. You look at the amount of money and tax
breaks that go into some of these projects and, you know, the jobs that you're creating, you know,
it's not that significant when you look at the number of people that are actually being employed
versus when we're talking about local foods, right? We're talking about this idea of even
just more farmers on the land. And, you know, the impact of that isn't just purchasing food from a
local farmer. I mean, there's a lot that's baked into that. And the multiplier of that, you know,
those dollars that you spend with a local producer circulate in your community. You know, so many more
times that the economic impact is like for every dollar is spent, it has the economic impact of
another dollar and 60 cents versus, you know, you go spend that dollar at, let's say a Walmart, maybe
50 cents is being returned back to the community because the rest is going to suppliers and
transportation and stuff and shareholders. I mean, you look at Wall Street's investment
and most of that money is going to shareholders. Yeah. You know, it's in, then when we talk about
those producers on the land too, it's not just that it's also oftentimes we have people who are
starting families. We have their children and those children are then going into schools.
So then you have more need for teachers in our communities, which is creating more jobs. You have
those people then going and buying supplies locally and spending their money locally.
So it's not, I wouldn't say a magic bullet, but it's interesting the way in which
investing in local food has this trickle effect that solves a lot of the issues or addresses a
lot of the issues that rural communities are facing in terms of economic development,
you know, with the quote unquote brain drain or the flight of young people from rural communities.
Yeah. It seems to address a number of those, even if it doesn't solve all of it.
Yeah. Well, and it's, it's a little bit the commodity system, the corn, soybean system,
the row crop commodity system that dominates, and even the large scale livestock system that dominates.
There's a lot of sound and fury there. It's really impressive to look at the figures
and say, look, this is how, look at this economic impact it's having. But when you look at the
community, that wealth is not being retained locally. So it's, it's going somewhere else.
It's going out on the, in the train cars and in the, in the semi trucks and all that.
Yeah. And you look at, you know, even just the amount of inputs that go into those,
those commodities and where those inputs are coming from. And they're coming from oftentimes
large multinational corporations. So those dollars that you're spending on fertilizer,
nitrogen, et cetera. Yeah. Some of those dollars are being retained in the community,
but the rest of it, they're going elsewhere and they're going to these, you know, investors
in giant companies that aren't in the local community. And then, yeah, you're dumping tons
of nitrogen that then just gets flushed down the river. So, and the thing I like to point out too,
because the thing that, you know, when we talk about these economic pieces too is, you know,
local foods right now, outside of farm to school, isn't subsidized really versus many of these
commodity crops. You have subsidies going into insurance programs and into, you know,
you just have a lot of these subsidies going into these programs, right? So that,
and that doesn't exist for local foods at the moment outside of farm to school. And so,
you know, even to talk about these, we really are kind of talking apples to oranges when it comes to
two, really just two different types of food systems. So tell me a little bit about community
food asset mapping. What does that consist of and what is it that you've, what are you looking for
and what have you discovered in this area here? So when we started that out here, part of what
we were trying to identify was, I mean, mostly, you know, like I mentioned, we had done these
interviews and a lot of what we had been hearing from folks was, you know, there isn't a local
foods movement. There used to be a really robust one and now there isn't one. There isn't a local
foods network. And we kept hearing all these little pieces of like things that used to exist
or that might be here. This person might have some equipment or this person might have a mill,
but that was just me doing interviews with people. And so meanwhile, I'm in this very privileged
position to be able to hear from 30 plus people about all the exciting things that they individually
are doing around local foods. And I'm hearing all these different opportunities individually.
And so a lot of the asset mapping really, I mean, the asset map itself was like the end product,
but like what really came out of it was bringing people together in these different communities
and in different towns, having them come together and have some of those conversations together. So
what, what are the cool things that people are doing in terms of local foods? What are the farms
that they're buying food from? Where, you know, what, what equipment do they know about? Where are
the buildings that are empty and not being utilized in the communities? And what are the ideas that
people have for those? It was really just hosting some of these sessions that, yeah, we were trying
to literally just create a map. We, you know, we draw a map on the wall and people are putting
post-its on it to kind of identify these assets. So that's what we're creating. But through that,
we're also just, we're trying to create and facilitate connections between people and trying
to get some ideas going. It's like two shifts passing in the night. There's all these great
things going on, but they're not communicating. I remember going to a couple of those meetings
where the postal notes have been put on the walls. I'm like, wow, when you look at that,
you know, you see the, I guess the trees for the forest or whatever. It's like pretty impressive.
Yeah. I mean, you, you see where the opportunity is. I mean, for us, you know, the, the nice thing
about it too, is we, you know, we had some folks in, in, in the sessions too, where we
got to hear about some history and about things that used to be there. And, you know, we also had
a couple of sessions where, you know, we had producers there with people who were looking
to buy local food and they were able to connect. I mean, they even just really, you know, it wasn't
anything grand in terms of infrastructure, but just those kind of connections of building community.
Because I think out here, particularly one of the things that we've been hearing from folks
is when folks move out here, it's, you know, where do I go? Where do I go to find local foods? And,
and we don't really, at this moment, we, we, we haven't had a, a resource guide. We haven't had,
you know, some of the things that used to exist in terms of pride of the prairie and the local
food guides. We haven't really had those outside of, I think the only thing that would be the
equivalent to that would be the Minnesota grown directory would probably be the, the closest thing
that someone could find to, to identify in local foods. So yeah, just trying to create, yeah, just
something that was really locally specific to this region of food infrastructure. It was all
those other things beyond just farms, but also what, what, you know, where do people buy food from?
Where, you know, what are the equipment pieces that they know about, or even just some of these
empty buildings? Yeah, that there's just interesting conversations that people have had about what could
potentially be there and, you know, what could they see being in those spaces? Yeah. So it's like,
there's all these dots out there, but there isn't the lines connecting the dots. Right. And I guess
that's the role that organization like LSP and some of these other groups can play is just literally
just simply bringing people together into the same room and they go, oh, you're doing that. Oh, and I
actually need this processed and you have the processing or you have the transportation kind
of thing. Is that something you kind of saw? Oh yeah. I mean, we, we heard that pretty early on too,
from a lot of folks was when we asked kind of what, what role shall LSP play in the food system out
here, it was bringing people together. I mean, that was, I think we heard that from producers,
economic development organizations. I mean, we just heard that was the biggest thing. I mean,
the biggest need. And it's something I think at LSP we do fairly well, is bringing people together.
So, but yeah, I think that's the one piece that, you know, when I've had conversations with folks
from other parts of the state or just in other towns that are interested in this is, I mean,
I think that's the part that's the most replicable of this is it doesn't really take much in terms
of experts to, to host something like this. What you really need though, are the people and,
and getting the people to the table. And I think, you know, we have the members in this region and
some history that we can reach out to people and know that there's going to be 15, 20 people that
are going to show up. And I think that's going to be the hardest part for folks if you're starting
from scratch or in a community where nothing like this exists right now. So. Is part of this too,
educating the general public, the eaters out there, the people that have to buy this food,
that they're like, oh, this is being raised in, in my community because it's been so long since
the community had to be self-sufficient that maybe they aren't, they aren't aware of what can be
raised and what is available. Yeah. We haven't really gone full blown on kind of general public
narrative or messaging at this point. I mean, we've done the food forum, which is like open to anyone
in the community to come to. And we've, that's the big event that we really do flyer a lot for and
get people to come out for. But a lot of our work right now is primarily with producers. And then
we've been actually focusing on institutions in our region. Again, I mentioned farm to school. I
think that's like, it's one of the things we've heard from a lot of producers about where we
should be focusing our energy right now is trying to, to build those relationships with those
institutions. And also with, you know, out here, it's there's hospitals and then also food shelves.
And so I think those are kind of three sort of institutions that we've really been focusing on
kind of the thought process. I think for us a little bit too, is by going for some of these
bigger wholesale markets as we have to create some infrastructure and coordination among producers
and in terms of aggregation and distribution to be able to, to, to meet the needs of those markets.
And by doing that, we're also creating a lot of the same infrastructure that would also allow
producers to sell to kind of more retail outlets, like grocery stores. And so it, it just rather
than having to find a hundred customers in a community to kind of meet that need, you have
one customer, which is the school district. And so that's kind of been our approach at the moment
is, is going for those and then, you know, really with the farm to school piece too, working with,
you know, ship coordinators and working with the schools. There's also a lot of messaging that can
go through that way too, in terms of food and where food comes from. So that's kind of been our
approach. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of this is just facilities, like is there a commercial kitchen?
Is there a way to process the food? Transportation issue, the aggregation seems like another big,
I mean, those are some of the big challenges that people are facing. Yeah. I mean, you know,
when you look at costs, I think distribution is a big one for, for folks and, and having the volume
of sale needed to really make those costs or make the transportation costs worth it. And so part of
the asset mapping was identifying a lot of the things like commercial kitchens in our region,
as well as refrigeration space. And, you know, we don't have a lot of open, usable refrigeration
space. We have a lot of communications. We have a lot of commercial kitchens that people could be
using, but the, yeah, the biggest one has been refrigeration outside of on-farm storage that
some folks have. And so that's been one area that we've been looking at projects like the Madison
Mercantile, for example, is taking this old Mercantile building, just huge square footage
and creating, you know, multiple incubation spaces in it, but also looking at converting part of that
into cold storage that producers could use. And that could be a potential spot for, for both storage,
but also for transportation as part of like this transportation network as well. So I guess this
could be a particular challenge, but maybe it's a asset too, in that you don't have the luxury here
of being close to say the Twin Cities or another metropolitan area where that can be your market.
And you can say, well, we'll just produce for that urban or suburban market. You're a good two and
a half hours, at least away here, at least in this area right here from the Twin Cities. So that's
not super viable. There are some people who transport all the way there, but they would have
to have quite a bit of quantity to do that. So yeah, I was wondering, is that a little,
I would figure that that's a challenge, but also maybe it's an incentive to become a little bit more
self-sufficient in the area. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's, you know, we're kind of in a
really interesting sweet spot, I guess, in some ways where if folks, you know, there are multiple
producers that are selling into the cities and it is two and a half hours. So you can definitely
have that as part of your sales strategy, but we're also far enough away where it's not the
sole focus for producers. And we also have a lot of producers and folks just generally in the area
that have a pretty strong commitment to just this region in general. I think that's the other kind
of advantage that we have. Things like, you know, the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development
Commission, it's kind of a five county economic development agency and they've actually invested
a ton in this region and around just trying to attract people to moving to this area and to
putting out roots out here by promoting jobs and recreation that are out here. But also they've
been one of the folks behind the Meander Art Crawl. So investing in culture and arts in the region.
I mean, we're here right now in Granite Falls. I mean, Granite Falls is another really good
example of a community that has invested a ton in local arts. And what you've seen as a result of
that is a pretty vibrant downtown compared to a lot of other communities of this size. I mean,
this is a population of 2000 people and you have a brew pub, you have two different art buildings,
you have, we have a local barber shop and we have a really, really awesome bakery owned by a local
farm family, Carl's Bakery owned by the Striblo Farm Family. So, you know, all those things on
their own, I don't know if any one of those would be able to succeed as well as they do without each
other and to also have this really vibrant arts community built up around this. You know, when I
talk about rural economic developments, from my perspective, you look at things like putting the
culture back in agriculture, right? And part of that is foods and food traditions. It's about
local foods and local food traditions that exist. And then it's also the other big piece of that.
I mean, it's arts, it's the arts and music piece. It's the things that attract people to a community
and make them want to stay and make them want to put down roots. Going through this process,
was there anything that super surprised you that you were like, you know, you probably had some
assumptions coming in, but was there anything that really surprised you going through the asset
mapping and having the meetings and talking to folks? I think the biggest thing for me,
when I think about what surprised me, it should have been really obvious, you know, in retrospect,
but, you know, it's another thing, just kind of one about the geography of this area. I mean,
there's, we're talking about the Upper Minnesota River Valley, and there's this five county region,
but we have multiple agencies all working out here on local foods, and we haven't been really
coordinated or talking with each other. So that, I mean, that surprised me that they're just due to
staff transitions and whatever else, we just, for a good four or five period, you know, five year
period, there just was not much coordination happening. It's not just the farmers that aren't
coordinated. It's the organizations and agencies and that type of thing. Exactly. You know, and
it's a challenging thing because, you know, everyone has their own work plan, has their own
projects that they're trying to move forward. But we have this unique opportunity, again,
out in our region where we have multiple agencies working over a similar shared geography. So when
I talk about those five counties of the RDC, the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development
Commission, it's also the same five counties that the SHIP program out here, Countryside Public
Health, has SHIP coordinators, so Statewide Health Improvement Program. And so it's, you know,
focused on nutrition, kind of those kind of programs, again, operating on those same five
counties. And then we have Prairie Five, which is another agency that is, you know, doing multiple
things. They're doing transportation out here. They're doing senior meals. They're helping with
food shelves. But they're also operating around those same five counties. And then there's us,
LSP, you know, our geography for this local foods work has started with those same five counties.
And so, yeah, I think for me, it was kind of surprising, one, just that we, you know, one,
hadn't been coordinating. And then two, also just learning about the awesome work each of these
agencies are doing around local foods. And part of our work then over the last year or so has been
really trying to figure out how do we coordinate our efforts and really work on them together.
And so Farm to School has been a current one that we're all currently lined up on. And yeah,
there's some really exciting projects that hopefully we'll be able to talk about in the future
as a result of that. Yeah, well, speaking of future, I guess what are the next steps? And is
there some one or two things that you're seeing that like, oh, okay, if we could get this mechanism
in motion, this would really help us move forward on some, some kind of taking this beyond just the
mapping and figuring out what we have and kind of really adding to this. Yeah, we've been working
with RSTP, Southwest RSTP. So that's the Regional Sustainable Development Partnership. And they're
out of the University of Minnesota extension. So we actually partnered with them on that asset
mapping project. So they were pretty instrumental with that. We had a grad student, Tara Conway,
who is one of the other folks that really helped with that work. And so we've been lucky to really
be working with them both on the asset mapping project, but now kind of on this next phase of a
kind of implementation of this. And so we're really focusing kind of right now on Farm to School. And
so we're going to be coordinating with some of these agencies on a kind of multi-pronged project.
I mean, part really, we're looking at some data around Farm to School in the region. But really,
what we're looking to do is we're trying to set up a list of what are 10 to 20 products that local
producers can produce that would be fairly competitive price wise with things that the
school's already purchasing from other food services. And we're also looking for those same
10 to 20 products. We're looking ones that are price competitive, but also require similar levels
of processing. Right now, they're buying bags of lettuce off a truck. So it probably doesn't make
sense for us to be promoting lettuce that is going to get chopped and washed and all these other
things that food service folks who are already strapped for time and staff aren't going to be
able to do. But right now, if they're having to take a box full of carrots, wash them, cut them,
roast them, that might be a product that would be a pretty good fit because it's going to come in the
same way from a producer as it's going to come from these food services. So that's kind of our next
phase of our project is trying to identify some of those products for school districts in our region,
do some relationship building with those directors. And also a big project we did at the food forum,
but we're going to be continuing to do is we're really just doing producer and buyer matchmaking.
So looking at some of these more institutional wholesale buyers in our region, trying to identify
products that they are looking to purchase and basically working with producers in our region
to identify what are they growing and trying to help match those up a little bit. So doing a little
bit of coordination. So that's, you know, over the next year, that's kind of one of the projects
we're working on. And yeah, in terms of like the kind of, I don't know, not quite quick fix,
but what's the, what was the question? It was a mechanism. Yeah. Yeah. Transportation, I feel like
is one that I've heard from a couple producers is a really big just logjam right now. Yeah,
I think that's one that we have not been working on. And I could see that being some, you know,
someone's going to need to figure that out. And I'm really looking forward to, you know,
some of these meetings we've been having with these agencies, because Prairie Five, for example,
is doing a ton of transportation in our region, moving just people around. And they also are doing
meal deliveries with refrigerated trucks. So they've got some sense of what transportation
in this region looks like. And so I'm hoping to really just be able to learn from them a little
bit about their experiences and what they've learned about coordinated transportation.
And maybe there's something that a group of producers out here might be able to learn a
few things from too. So I've talked to a couple of people involved with food hubs, including
Beverly Doherty, who does the real food hub in Wilmer, which is kind of near here. And they have
a van that they've rented that they are doing, I think, including in this area, where they pick
up food from farmers, aggregate it, and then deliver it to folks. Do you see food hubs as
playing a role, a bigger role here? Or what's the role that they could play? Or I know that they've
been hit and miss. Some seem to get going and then they just run out of steam. And then hers seems to
have a little bit of head of steam behind it. Yeah. I mean, you've talked to Bev, so you kind of know
she's a firecracker. She's, yeah, I wish we had 10 more Bev's out here, because we'd get a lot done.
Yeah, I think the neat thing about what they're doing, I mean, they have one transportation route
that goes up to Morris and back. And then as a result of some of the work we've done with the
asset mapping and just some of this work we've been doing through local food systems, they create
a separate route that kind of goes out to Madison, through Montevideo, down to Grant Falls, and back
up to Wilmer, where they're based out of. And they do a mix of dropping off produce, but they also are
buying produce from local producers as well. I think the other big role that food hubs could
really be playing, I mean, talking a lot about farm to school is just kind of where I'm at right
now. But I'm really excited because Bev has been doing a lot around farm to school. And I think
there's something about what food hubs are doing in terms of aggregation and distribution and
figuring those pieces out and having one, kind of a one-stop shop is really appealing both for,
potentially for producers, but also I know for the school districts. And I know many school
districts, you know, doing farm to school, you know, buying things from 20 different producers can be
just crazy and managing drop-off and managing even just the amount of produce that you need
to meet some of these orders. And something like a food hub, that's especially a food hub that is
connected in with some of the other food hubs in the regions, have the capacity to be able to be
the one buyer for producers. So a producer doesn't have to work with five different school districts.
And on the flip side, they also can be the one kind of the one source that the school districts
are also buying from and not having to, there's a little bit of an interface there that there's
a role for that middleman position out here for sure when it comes to those orders. So yeah,
I think I kind of see that role, you know, as one that could be a, yeah, it's one that we're
trying to explore with them for sure. So I'm thinking this must be kind of fun for you. I
know you live just outside of town here in Granite Falls and you have deep connections to the
community, deep roots here. This must be kind of fun to see, maybe to think about planting the seeds
of what a future food system could look like in this area. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, we,
I mean, once it's enjoyable work. I mean, I spend most of my days working with producers and
organizing meetings with producers, which, you know, is pretty fun. I mean, just to be honest,
it's, they're great groups of people to be in meetings with, oftentimes with really good food
when we do potlucks, especially, you know, we've been doing a lot of meetings up at the Madison
Mercantile. So it's just, it's, it's a awesome space again, to see just the intersections of
community, our food all coming together in one spot and just the vibrancy that that brings into
a community is, is, is pretty amazing. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, there's definitely long
days, but yeah, very, I feel very privileged to be able to do this work for sure. And yeah, I mean,
I live out here, so it's, it's, you know, I, I'm hopefully going to be directly benefiting from
the fruits and vegetables of my labor. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's something that when I moved out
here and just thinking about the work that I'm doing, it's, it's wanting definitely self-interest
to, to, to grow this, but also, you know, for my kids too, I mean, my kids are going to be in the
school district out here and when they're being served meals, yeah, it would be amazing to have
a significant portion of that coming from producers that I'm working with versus, you know, coming
from who knows where and who knows what's in it. It's, you gotta start somewhere. Yeah, you gotta
start somewhere. So, and that's the, that's the thing too, is I think right now we're talking
really big pieces here, but we're also, you know, just trying to start with just even, hey, let's do
one vegetable or one dish and let's just start from there. Cause I think that's, that's really
where these systems get built is, is through just starting, trying and it's, you know, baby steps,
but my kid a year ago was taking baby steps and now he's running faster than I am. So it doesn't
take a long time either. For more on building community food systems, see the podcast page for
your Ear to the Ground episode 347 at landstewardshipproject.org. There, you'll also
find links to other podcast episodes we've done on this issue. If you have comments or suggestions
about this podcast, contact Brian DeVore at bdevor at landstewardshipproject.org or you can call 612-816-9342.
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