Tag: Lane Regional Food Hub

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.

Living the CPW Experience

Posted on by Julia Havens
Somaly Jaramillo Hurtado Fulbright Scholar CPW Community Planning Workshop
Lane Regional Food Hub Team, CPW-Community Planning Workshop. Team members: Somaly Jaramillo Hurtado, Aniko Drlik-Muehleck, Stephen Dobrinich, Evelyn Perdomo, and Alex Macfarlan. Missing: Leigh Anne Michael, Project Manager

My name is Somaly, and I would like to tell you about my Community Planning Workshop (CPW) experience. I am an Afro-Colombian Leader’s Fulbright student in my first year in the Community and Regional Planning Master Program at the University of Oregon. I applied to this program because my professional goal is to implement projects of sustainable development that not only benefit the environment, but also improve the quality of life of people. Furthermore, I want to work in the design and implementation of development programs for neighborhoods, cities, regions, and countries. CPW offers the experience of working in real projects, and I wanted to face real situations and obstacles in graduate school that appear during the implementation of a project.

Now, I am enrolled in CPW, and participating in an exciting project, the “Lane County Year-Round Regional Public Market and Food Hub Market Analysis.” The purpose of the market analysis is to provide the City of Eugene Planning and Development Department and the Lane County Economic Development Division with information to better understand the market potential for a regional public market and food hub that will advance the cause of local food in Lane County.

This project is really fascinating! I chose this project because it is the first step in a longer planning process that not only could boost economic development, but also could encourage social cohesion, employment opportunities, healthy eating habits, environmental education, and sustainable agriculture; values with which I feel affiliated. I am confident this project will allow me learn about the market research process and about public markets and food hubs. Also, it will help me enhance my planning, public speaking, analyzing, and writing skills. 

During the project we are going to identify successful case studies of public markets and food hubs across the nation, collect information about food expenditures and shopping preferences in Lane County through a household survey of Eugene and Springfield residents, as well as identify the gaps in the supply and distribution chain for local food in Lane County. We will also work with a Technical Resource Group comprised of people involved with local food to inform the team about the research over the study period.

Working on this project is fascinating, as is the idea of applying the knowledge I learn in my home country. My commitment as a Fulbright student is to go back to Colombia and use my knowledge and learning experience to contribute to the development of my nation. Colombia’s small farmers cope with issues of getting their products from the rural to the urban areas. I hope from working on this project to be able not only to design and execute a market research project about local food in Colombia, but also to develop a food hub and get support from Colombian institutions for its implementation.

Stay tuned if you are hungry for more INFOODMATION about this project!

Somaly Jaramillo Hurtado Fulbright Scholar CPW Community Planning Workshop About the author: Somaly Jaramillo Hurtado currently holds an Afro-colombian Leader’s Fulbright scholarship, and is working toward a Master Degree in Community and Regional Planning, with an emphasis on environmental planning and community development at the University of Oregon. Somaly is an Environmental and Natural Resources Administrator at Universidad Autónoma de Occidente in Cali, Colombia. Her professional experience includes implementing the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System, and designing and monitoring hazardous waste environmental management plans.