The Good Food Movement is striving for a vibrant community food system – where the growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, marketing, consuming and disposing of food enhances the environmental, economic, social and personal health of people and the community.

Check out the groups below to learn more about what this means in our community:

Building a Better Food System - Local Update

June 2008
We've just finishing thumbing through a couple of interesting new reports about food in our community. The first is entitled Why Local Linkage Matters: Findings from the Local Economic Food Study. Full Circle Farm was a participant in this study along with a number of other local farms, grocery stores, restaurants and food businesses.

The report was authored by Dr. Viki Sonntag for the nonprofit Sustainable Seattle and it describes, for the first time, the economic benefits of a local food system. That study found that "when dollars are spent locally, they can be re-spent locally, raising the community's overall level of economic activity." For instance, dollars spent at grocery stores and restaurants that serve locally produced foods will have "more than twice the usual impact" of spending at conventional stores and restaurants. The study found that "a shift of just 20% of our food dollars into locally directed spending would result in a nearly half billion dollar annual income increase in King County alone and double that in the Central Puget Sound region."

While much has been written about the economics of our food system-most of it with an eye to improving production efficiencies, this report takes a different tack, shifting the focus of analysis to look beyond economic performance and consider how the web of relationships that make up the local food economy provide for economic sustainability, which in turn, contributes to social and ecological sustainability.

Check it out at www.sustainableseattle.org.

The second interesting report was released by the Seattle-King County Acting Food Policy Council and it explores the relationship between food insecurity (lack of access to nutritious, culturally appropriate foods) with the locations of grocery stores and public transit through a series of GIS maps.

The study's authors calculated travel times from homes to supermarkets to estimate of the accessibility of supermarkets for households that rely on transit for shopping trips. Among their key findings:

• Despite the fact that many lower-income neighborhoods are close to commercial areas, many places with populations at risk of food insecurity may not be serviced by the larger grocery stores that are more likely to carry a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables at a reasonable cost. In Seattle, such neighborhoods are primarily downtown and in southern Seattle.
• Many middle and upper class residential areas in the northern parts of the Seattle are not well served by transit and are not within walking distance of grocery stores, meaning these folks have to get in their cars and drive to the grocery store, increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Acting Food Policy Council makes a series of recommendations for local government officials to consider including:

• Coordinate location of bus routes, bus stops, and schedules to increase geographic access to grocery stores.
• Strategically locate grocery stores to maximize efficiency, reduce fuel consumption, and limit greenhouse gas emissions.
• Explore incentives for developers to locate grocery stores in areas lacking access.
• Explore incentives for convenience stores to stock healthy options (e.g. fresh fruits and vegetables).

Check it out: king.wsu.edu/foodandfarms/foodpolicycouncil.htm.

Full Circle Farm goes on record for Local Farms, Healthy Kids

January 2008
This January 2008, Full Circle farmer Andrew Stout took a day out from farm work in Carnation to join other farmers, parents and community advocates in Olympia to support legislation that would improve the connections between local farms and schools, state institutions and food banks.

As we've described before in this space, getting healthy, fresh foods to people in our communities, especially kids and those in need, was a founding value for Full Circle. We are very excited about the fact that legislators in Olympia are considering this "win-win" legislation designed to expand the opportunities for local farms to feed local kids fresh healthy food. The bills, HB2798 in the House and SB6483 in the Senate were introduced by Representative Eric Pettigrew of Seattle and Senator Brian Hatfield of Grays Harbor and have garnered a broad list of cosponsors in both the House and Senate.

You can see if your legislators are on board at www.leg.wa.gov/legislature. You can also check WEC's website, www.wecprotects.org, for the latest news.

To read the full summary, please click here.

National Farmers Market Coalition Launched!

November 2007
Recently Full Circle farmer Andrew Stout traveled to Baltimore, Maryland to attend the first-ever national Farmers Market Summit hosted by the USDA, a new organization he helped to found.

At the summit, attendees developed a priority list of issues and areas to be addressed including supporting policy changes ranging from zoning and securing permanent locations for markets to helping markets navigate and work to change regulations such as health department codes governing the selling of meats, cheese, fish and wine, to broadening low-income access to the fresh healthy food available at farmers markets.

The Farmers Market Coalition was formed to give a unified voice, support and coordination to the very decentralized farmers market movement that has sprung up "organically" across the country.

More info on the Farmers Market Coalition can be found at the Web site.

To read more about the meeting, please click here.