Month: March 2014

Meet Our RARE AmeriCorps Participant: Saira Siddiqui

Posted on by Julia Havens

Saira Siddiqui RARE Resource Assistance for Rural Environments

Saira Siddiqui received her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Design with Minors in Studio Art and English from the University at Buffalo, New York. As a student, Saira held internships with the Buffalo Olmstead Parks Conservancy and the Mayor’s Office of Strategic Planning. After attaining her Bachelor’s degree, Saira decided to apply to RARE AmeriCorps – Resource Assistance for Rural Environments in hopes of gaining hands-on experience in the community development field while making positive changes in the community she serves. Following her year with the RARE Program, Saira plans on attending graduate school to further her studies in planning and community development.

Saira is placed with La Grande Main Street, which works to revitalize the City of La Grande’s downtown using the Oregon Main Street approach. La Grande Main Street is volunteer-driven by downtown business owners, community members and supported by many local organizations. The La Grande Main Street Program was officially designated by the State on September 26, 2008 as an “Oregon Main Street Transforming Downtown.” La Grande joined 10 other Oregon communities that were designated as either Performing Main Street programs or Transforming Main Street programs at that time.

With La Grande Main Street, Saira will coordinate and manage various components of the La Grande Main Street Program. Saira will be involved in all aspects of the project, including, but not limited to, daily administration, long-range planning, stakeholder engagement, and various special projects. Major activities include the daily, weekly, and monthly management of the program, the associated standing committees, and the LGMS board of directors. Saira will also provide staff support to the program and all of its activities, including meeting management, calendars of events, single-point-of-contact, marketing and communications, event coordination, project assistance and/or coordination and/or management, and technical assistance to committees as needed.

Organization: La Grande Main Street
Community: La Grande
Population: 13,095
County: Union

Making Local Food Connections

Posted on by Julia Havens

The 8th Annual Local Food Connection Conference

Lane Regional Food Hub Community Planning Workshop Aniko Drlik-MuehleckAt the beginning of February, my Community Planning Workshop (CPW) team and I got a big, tasty, educational treat. Together with several RARE AmeriCorps food systems participants, we headed out for the 8th Annual Local Food Connection conference to enjoy a day packed with scrumptious local food (thank you farmers and LCC culinary students!) and productive discussions surrounding local food production and distribution in Lane County.

While my team’s primary goal is to assess potential consumer demand for a public market and food hub in the Eugene/Springfield area, we also need to gain a complete understanding of our local food’s journey from the farm to your table. Thanks to the insights of the Lane County farmers, food processors, distributors, vendors, and non-profit allies who attended the Local Food Connection, we now have a much deeper appreciation of our county’s vibrant food system. I, for example, had no idea that UO’s dining services purchases approximately 25% of their produce from local producers such as Hay Bayles! Farm and Sweet Leaf Organic Farm in the summer and many more. What a great way to get nutritious and delicious food to our students!

As we observed sessions on topics ranging from food distribution challenges to commercial kitchens and grocery stores to increasing institutions’, everyday shoppers’, and tourists’ demand for local food, several key themes began to emerge:

  • Lane Regional Food Hub Community Planning Workshop Aniko Drlik-MuehleckSupply Challenges – Local producers in Lane County have difficulty competing with conventional food supply because their products are less uniform, only available seasonally, processing facilities are limited, and government regulations are cumbersome. Similarly, local distributors struggle with regulations and sometimes lack the scale required to move food around in a cost effective manner.
  • Consumption Challenges – Many of the suppliers, distributors, and vendors participating in the conference posed a common question: how do we increase consumer demand for local products? Participants cited buyers’ perception of local food as being expensive as a key barrier to increasing consumption.
  • Partnerships might help overcome some of these barriers – By pooling resources, producers and distributors could effectively increase scale and share marketing and educational outreach to consumers.

Could a food hub in Lane County potentially help tackle some of these challenges and provide a venue for some of the solutions conference attendees suggested? Based on our preliminary investigation of the functions other food hubs across the country serve, we certainly think a food hub in Lane County has tremendous potential to support our local food system. As we move forward with our market analysis for the City of Eugene and Lane County, we will draw on the issues raised at the Local Food Connection to guide any recommendations we make.

 

CPW Community Planning Workshop Aniko Drlik-MuehleckAbout the Author: Aniko Drlik-Muehleck, originally from Berkeley, CA, is now a Master of Community and Regional Planning candidate at the University of Oregon and participated in the Community Service Center’s RARE AmeriCorps Program – Resource Assistance for Rural Environments with the City of Pendleton from 2012-2013. She enjoys gardening and chatting with her chickens.