By Abigail Blinn, Procurement Coordinator, Rogue Valley Food System Network and Rogue Valley Farm to School

There has been increased attention on access to quality food in the past 10-15 years, and especially this past year with a global pandemic. What has followed is an increase in resources, capacity, and funding opportunities. This trend is surely evident in the state of Oregon, with a particular interest in food hubs.

“A food hub provides the mechanism to get more healthy, locally raised food into conventional markets, making it more convenient for consumers, while also returning a larger share of the ‘food dollar’ to participating farmers,” says Anthony Flaccavento, SCALE, Inc. consultant contracted to conduct the SW Oregon Food Hub Feasibility Study.

Little pockets of the state have formed collaborations with farmers, food businesses, and eaters to streamline production and marketing. Southern Oregon wanted to see if it were possible to do so. The Ford Family Foundation, NeighborWorks Umpqua, Blue Zones Project-Umpqua (now Thrive Umpqua), and City of Roseburg funded the food hub feasibility study that started in March 2020. Over 100 farmers, buyers, and food system leaders from southwest Oregon participated. From that assessment, an analysis of production and marketing was completed and recommendations were made to address barriers in access and growth. As a RARE member with the Rogue Valley Food System Network, I was able to chime into this study in late September.

Though loosely defined, this region consists of Coos, Curry, Douglas, Josephine, and Jackson counties. There are a few assets that make a food hub in the region promising. Agricultural products in the region are vast; the coastal cranberry bogs and fish and seafood, orchard fruits, berries, and grapes for wine production, and cattle and range animals. And, the produce staples are grown throughout the five counties such as carrots, beets, potatoes, brassicas, and grains. The current market for local products serves as another asset to the region. There is a growth of the direct to the consumer market through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and purchasing of local products offered in retail settings has gotten much easier with more grocery stores, farm markets, and farm stands offering local products. There is even a rise in institutional purchases, spearheaded by the farm to school movement. A food hub seems like a natural fit for the area, however, a few barriers exist to have a flow regionally.

Among these barriers, the one that is not changing, are mountain passes creating geographical sub-regions that make transportation routes and physical distribution of products difficult. There are also infrastructure shortcomings, difficultly streamlining marketing efforts, and a challenge managing the flow of food regionally. Additionally, there are barriers to land access and local product affordability, being the most prominent barriers to establishing a food hub. These challenges also influence each other, making solutions that much more complicated. This is where RARE arrives to move mountains and save the day! Just kidding, that’s where the incredibly dedicated food system movers and shakers of the region once again show up to address these challenges. It just so happens that southern Oregon has a food system RARE member to be a part of the effort.

Several recommendations were made following the food hub feasibility study. One is to form working groups around the recommendations. The study recommended setting up a regional implementation team to guide the study’s seven primary recommendations. In consultation with the Food Hub Study Core Team, a few organizations were approached to help lead this effort based on their level of staff capacity including Rogue Valley Food System Network (RVFSN), Otterbee’s Market, Umpqua Valley Farm to School and Blue Zones Project-Umpqua (now Thrive Umpqua). Thus, the Southern Oregon Food Alliance (SOFA) was formed as the regional implementation team with RVFSN serving in the role of convener for the team. The network connects the community to local producers, facilitates the sharing of resources, communicates local events and happenings on the web, and advocates for a local and resilient food system in many other ways. It was a perfect fit for RVFSN to take on something to help our region and the bordering counties of Jackson and Josephine with local food access.

With RVFSN having a bit of added capacity, they, along with Otterbee’s Market, and Umpqua Farm to School, were able to form an implementation team. As of now, we are forming the working groups and collaborating with other regions about the feasibility study itself. Many organizations and individuals have raised their hands to collaborate and leverage each other to address these recommendations. Stay tuned as we move forward as the Southern Oregon Food Alliance (SOFA)!

About the Author, Abigail Blinn: Abigail grew up in the rolling hills outside of Gettysburg, PA, having an interest in food, nutrition, and agriculture early on. She attended Penn State University, went on to pursue a dietetic internship at the University of New Hampshire, and received her Registered Dietitian Credentials. After dabbling in various focus areas of nutrition including hospitals, food banks and pantries, extension services, food service management sites, and research settings, she felt compelled to address the root cause of many nutrition-related illnesses and its relation to food security. Abigail is thrilled to contribute to regional solutions identified by Southern Oregon community members who know this local food system best. She is also an outdoor enthusiast – taking any chance she gets to climb rocks, ski mountains, and exist in the forest.

By Hannah Fuller, Community Food Systems Organizer, OSU Extension Service Wasco County

Everyone has logged into Zoom for the first time that month. After a series of meetings over conference call fellow RARE, Eva Kahn, and I convinced our partners in South Wasco County to meet over Zoom so we could see each other’s faces. It was time to develop the mission statement and name for a new non-profit in South Wasco County Oregon. Compared to the county seat, The Dalles, South Wasco County has a very different culture. The Dalles sits on the banks of the Columbia River Gorge, while the southern part of the county stretches through grassy hills along the Deschutes River all the way down to the center of the state. South Wasco County is a collection of small towns “you could miss if you blink” but the community is strong.

Eva had organized a F.E.A.S.T. (Food, Education, Agriculture, Solutions, Together) organizing session in March a week before shutdowns from the pandemic hit, and there was still a lot of energy in the community to come together and work to strengthen the local rural food system.

So, there we sat on Zoom. Eva and I acting as outside consultants, and a handful of eager community members ready to work together to start the foundation of this new organization. Eva and I had spent hours preparing our facilitation to help folks work together and create an organization that really reflected all of the community member’s needs. One member sat in the driveway of another to get better Wifi, someone else sat in their kitchen with their husband making lunch behind them, someone’s hair was constantly blowing in the strong eastern Oregon winds as. It wasn’t a picture-perfect meeting area, but it worked.

For being “new to Zoom” everyone quickly dived into our work. We screenshared and took turns picking words, sharing name ideas, nit-picking over every sentence, comma, and turn of phrase. “Is that name common? …People down here don’t like that word. …What does “sustainability” even look like.” Two hours later, we’d come up with a name, a mission statement (what we will do) and even a vision statement (the world we want to see) too. Everyone sat with satisfied grins and I was so glad I could see them over Zoom.

Reflecting on this experience, the community members didn’t like a single word Eva and I suggested, but they were so grateful for our facilitation. Coming from university and non-profit organization backgrounds, Eva and I were ready with piles of buzzwords and turns of phrase that were common in the bubble that we already worked in. But in South Wasco, it’s outside of the bubble and words land differently here. Everyone has different associations with words, and while so many values they describe are similar—hard work, trust, resilience—words have so much power and connotation that they carry with them. It also showed how much value we have as RARE members to provide the infrastructure and support for community development, but in the end, the community members are the ones doing the work. They know the people they work with, they know what works needs to be done, and they are the ones with the visions for what they want their future to look like.

About the author, Hannah Fuller: Hannah Fuller served as the Community Food Systems Coordinator for the Oregon State University Wasco County Extension Service. Hannah played an integral role in connecting OSU and partner agencies including Gorge Grown Food Network, The Blue Zones Project, North Central Public Health District, and Oregon Food Bank. Duties included program management, assessment, community building, volunteer recruitment, teaching, and outreach. Main focus areas included providing nutrition education, engaging volunteers of the Food Hero Volunteer Training program, conducting a School Physical Activity and Nutrition Environment Tool (SPAN-ET) Evaluation in local schools, serving as a liaison between OSU Extension and the Food Security Coalition, developing gardening partnerships, providing support for Mid-Columbia Medical Center’s Food for Life program, and developing reports to share project aims, outcomes, and recommendations with other partners.