Help Guide OCFSN into the Future as a Member of the Leadership Team!
The Oregon Community Food Systems Network is seeking nominations and applications to join the Leadership Team. Any representative of an OCFSN member organization, approved by that organization, is eligible to serve.
Download the Nomination/Application form here.
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Help Plan the 2020 Community Food Systems Convening!
Volunteers are invited to join the planning committee for the 2020 Oregon Community Food Systems Convening. Our annual Convening is an opportunity for members to meet, share information, learn, and be inspired. We need your ideas and creativity to make this another exciting and engaging event.
Contact Matthew Buck with questions about either of these opportunities at matt@foodalliance.org or 503-267-4667.
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Food systems transformation and public policy:
What can we do together?
By: Lauren Gwin, on behalf of the OCFSN Policy Committee
Do the words “public policy” and “advocacy” make you feel energized or tired? Confident or confused? All of the above?
As a network, OCFSN recognizes that changing public policy, on many levels and with many levers, is essential to food system transformation. If you came to the “Laws, rules, money, and justice” plenary at the 2019 OCFSN Convening or participated in the “Community Food Systems at the Legislature” project, you know that many OCFSN members are involved with policy change in some way. And members have been sharing knowledge, skills, and experiences with each other, to move policy priorities forward and grow our collective voice and muscles.
What’s next? Your OCFSN Policy Committee is glad you asked.
January: Tell us about your organization! OCFSN Public Policy Member Survey
We want to learn about your organization’s current capacity to work on policy issues. It’s not a test, and there are no right or wrong answers. Your responses will help us build a network-wide inventory of our members’ knowledge, skills, and strengths. And even if you don’t think you work on policy, you may have skills that are valuable with policy work.
Your responses will also help us design future workshops and training opportunities that meet and support members where they are.
We’ll send out more info and the survey in January. We’re adapting the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future’s “Get it Toolgether” assessment, learning from how it was used by a network of food councils in Michigan.
January-March: 2020 Oregon Legislature, anyone?
The Oregon Legislature only meets for 35 days in 2020 (Feb. 3 - Mar. 8), but we know some of you will be working on bills and funding measures. We created a new “Community Food Systems at the Legislature” spreadsheet in Google where you can share your 2020 Legislature priorities and learn about those of other members and partners. Check it out and add your priorities here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VtnQ6EdOhN72rx99teF_ekm9rBaIa16yzZHRDoTQGFQ/edit?usp=sharing
Later in 2020: Building Power Together at our OCFSN Convening
At our next OCFSN Convening, we will bring OCFSN members together across all levels of public policy experience to learn from each other and build our individual and collective advocacy skills and voice. Do you have ideas for this? Share them with us.
More about the OCFSN Policy Committee:
The OCFSN Policy Committee serves to lead and support this OCFSN strategic objective: “develop competency for farm and food policy assessment and advocacy.”
The Policy Committee does not choose policy priorities for the Network. We create space and opportunity for members to inform, educate, learn from, respectfully challenge, and build common cause across our wide diversity of interests within the food system.
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Local Food Leader and Community Food Systems workshops come to Oregon
By: Lauren Gwin, OSU Center for Small Farms & Community Food Systems
In September, OCFSN partnered with Iowa State University to bring two of ISU’s national food systems training programs to Oregon. The 1-day Local Food Leader workshop was for beginning local food practitioners interested in food systems development and collaboration. The 2-day Community Food Systems workshop, designed to be more advanced, went deeper into skills and strategies for community-based food system visioning, planning, implementation, and evaluation.
We were able to work with the ISU trainers to weave some Oregon context - including the experiences and innovative approaches of OCFSN member organizations - into the two workshops. This allowed us to apply what we were learning to the Network’s shared vision, mission, and activities. It also provided a great introduction to OCFSN for the people in the room who were new to their organizations and, in some cases, to Oregon.
Both workshops had a full house, with 33 people attending Local Food Leader, and 28 attending Community Food Systems. The two ISU trainers, Courtney Long and Kaley Hohenshell, walked us through a lot of material, while holding space for networking and small group brainstorms and problem solving.
About a week ago, ISU sent us evaluation results from the workshops, and we were pleased to see that many participants said they improved their skills and knowledge across quite a few areas covered by the curriculum. For example, ISU reports an 87% increase in participants’ understanding of “how to evaluate priority projects for collective community processes.” As another example, they report a 69% increase in participants’ knowledge of “how to identify assets and opportunities in a community.”
LFL participants also reported improvements but at lower rates (which may indicate how few real “beginners” we had in the room). For example, ISU reported a 40% increase in participants’ skills related to coalition development, and a 33% increase in participants’ knowledge of how to create and use a logic model.
Community Food System teams show off their ideas and implementation plans.
In addition, we held the workshops at the OSU North Willamette Research and Extension Center, in Aurora, which let us enjoy two lunchtime tours given by Heidi Noordijk of OSU Small Farms Extension: (1) the small-scale/low-cost on-farm packhouse project and (2) the winter vegetable production trials, aimed at meeting local market demand for Oregon produce throughout more of the year (learn more: https://www.eatwintervegetables.com/the-project).
Heidi Noordijk, OSU Small Farms, shows off the small-scale,
low-cost. on-farm packhouse.
If you attended one or both workshops and are still interested in signing up for any of ISU’s “go deeper” online modules, you have until October 2020 to register for those, or full certifications, for a 50% discount.
So far, four folks who attended one of the workshops have signed up for those modules, and three of them plan to complete the full Community Food Systems certification program. We’ll ask them to share what they learned with our whole Network in future.
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Food Sovereignty in the Northwest:
How Tribes Are Leading the Way to Reclaim and Protect Traditional Foodways
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OCFSN vice-chair Nora Frank-Buckner and the Northwest Tribal Food Sovereignty Coalition have a new article in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.
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"American Indians and Alaska Native people experience large disparities in the prevalence of preventable, diet-related diseases directly associated with the lack of access to healthy, traditional food. The Northwest Tribal Food Sovereignty Coalition, a tribally driven network, is an opportunity for tribes, tribal organizations, and allied partners in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state to organize efforts that are driven by cultural revitalization, community empowerment, and the use of innovative strategies to improve the health of the people and reclaim food sovereignty."
"In Northwest Tribal Food Sovereignty Coalition: An Intertribal Collaboration, the authors discuss the development, recruitment, and activities of this newly formed coalition, and the ways it has helped further the tribal food sovereignty movement."
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR POLICY, PRACTICE, AND RESEARCH
- In building the coalition, it was important to bring together a wide range of professions, backgrounds, and communities to ensure a diverse knowledge base.
- The strategic planning process was crucial in focusing and implementing coalition activities.
- Creating food policy is a priority for many tribal communities, but it is a challenge. A coalition allows tribes to mentor each other in this process. As a participant in the 2018 Annual Gathering noted, “[The biggest takeaway was] . . . policy and how it needs urgent attention. I needed the recharge with this gathering to continue the work at home.”
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Reflections from Two Decades
on the Local Food Research Trail
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Debra Tropp spent more than 26 years at the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, where she played a key role in developing research projects and guidance materials (aimed at small and midsized producers) that shared practical insights about evolving food supply chains.
In this JAFSCD article, she reviews research efforts from 1995 to the present, and reflects on lessons learned at USDA.
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Oregon Community Foundation
Community Grants Program Deadline - January 15, 2020
The Community Grants Program is a broadly accessible, responsive statewide grants program. Its long-term goals are to strengthen the social fabric of our communities and improve the lives of all Oregonians. This program responds to evolving, community-identified needs and builds civic leadership and engagement.
The Community Grants Program awards about 350 grants annually, with the average award $20,000 and the award range usually $5,000 to $50,000.
Please visit OCF’s website at for application log-in directions and additional guidance.
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