Community Food Assessments

[Ken Morse]

We at Healthy Oxford Hills are interested in connecting with folks have initiated community food assessment. For our 11 town area, centered around Norway and Paris, we believe the 25,000 residents eat $100,000,000 worth of food every year. We want to find out where that food comes from, what channels it goes through to get to our mouths. We want to learn this along with informaition about local production and local production potential, so that we can create a 10-20 year strategic plan to produce 80% of our food locally. This $80 million annually could create 2000 $40,000 per year jobs (less due to other real costs, but more due to the local mutliplier effect), and we believe not only is the the NEW ECONOMY, but also that our schools, hospitals and other local groups can lead this tranformation to local self-reliance.

If anyone else is working on this across the state, I'd like to start a conversation about sharing ideas, tools and findings. Contact me at [e-mail]

[Del Ketcham]

Hi Ken,

I like you am wondering about lots of things that may be going on or not going on in Maine.

I am planning on attending the Eat Local Foods Coalition Meeting
February 26, 2009 from 1pm to 3:30pm – Curtis Memorial Library, Brunswick - Seminar Room (2nd floor) in the hopes of learning more about what is happening in Maine and how we might be helpful.

Peace,

Del Ketcham