It is estimated that the average distance that produce travels before reaching the shelf of your local grocery store chain is 1500 miles. The varieties that are sold there are those that have been bred to travel well and have a long shelf life… not usually the tastiest nor the most nutritious. Farming methods of agribusiness continue to deplete the soil of nutrients while reducing biodiversity. Roughly 80% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are fed to farm animals, to promote faster growth and to compensate for the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in which they are raised.
Not sustainable. Not secure.
The Local 20/20 Local Food Action Group is working to create a better connection between the people of East Jefferson County and the delicious, nutritious, organic food that is grown and raised around this area. This Action Group will continue to promote the production, consumption and, (working with the Beyond Waste Action Group), food waste management of healthy locally grown food while addressing any systemic barriers to full food security.
In the latest Local 20/20 column in the Port Townsend/Jefferson County Leader, Eco-dietician Mary Purdy discussions ways we can minimize our impact on the environment with our eating choices. Saving the Planet with your Fork By Mary Purdy, MS, RDN While not everyone always has a choice in what they…
Meghan grows a lot of vegetables and also preserves a number of foods. Click here Hopscotch farm to see what Meghan is doing and how to access her products. If the link doesn’t work, use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8utC8oqiRXs in your browser window. Last updated:Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Here is Local 20/20’s latest column in the Port Townsend Leader that summarizes the amazing work of the Quimper Community Harvest team! Thank you PT Leader! Quimper Community Harvest Wraps Up the 2021 Gleaning Season By PT Gleaner coordinators: Seth Rolland, Suzanne Wilson, Gabrielle Vanwert, Kathy Darrow, Mary Hunt Beginning…
The local Farmer’s Markets are closed for a few months, but we can still use food from the markets and local farms that we preserved for our winter meals. Did you freeze local berries? Do you have apples, pears, cabbages, squashes, onions, garlic or potatoes in cold storage? Here are…
Continue to join us online for the Eat Local! Campaign. For details, links to resources, farm-finder lists, and unique Thanksgiving recipes using local foods go to http://l2020.org/local-food/eat-local And don’t forget that the Farmer’s Market in Uptown Port Townsend is still open through early December. You can find delicious fall and…
Is it possible to get beyond boiled & buttered veggies? How much meat would you eat if you boiled and buttered it each night? Not much, I’m guessing and yet that’s how we always serve vegetables. No wonder kids don’t want to eat them. But, if you turn veggies into nuggets and…
In its initial incarnation as the Food Resiliency Action Group, the primary emphasis was the instigation, promotion and support of a network of neighborhood-base community gardens incubated by Local 20/20 and launched as independently run gardens. By June 2009, there were over 20 such gardens in various stages of development. Most of these gardens are planted and harvested collectively, as opposed to the more common P-Patch model, where people have their own individual plots. Local 20/20 maintains a list of these gardens as a community resource.The concept of collaborative gardening has been extended to the creation of several food bank gardens as well, which then spun off to form a separate non-profit, the Food Bank Growers organization. A related effort, the volunteer gleaning projects that help to put to use unharvested food that would otherwise be wasted, was housed under Local 20/20 for a while, and then moved to under the Food Bank Growers organization in 2022, as there were great synergies with that organization. In the educational arena, this action group has produced workshops on worm bin composting and on pressure canning, and provides information about gardening on this website (check out the pages on gardening resources or garden options).
The success of these ventures to promote the growing of food eventually led to the concern that it could undermine our local farm industry by lowering demand for farm produce. At that point the group’s focus transitioned to the support of our local farms. A two-year surveying project was conducted for the purpose of educating ourselves and the public about how the farms and farmers were doing.
Another goal was to start and maintain broad community conversations about our food system, and why it is important to support our local farms. To this end, the group produced two film series, one specifically about GMO food, and the other about food issues associated with changes to agricultural practices over the past fifty years. Each film series was accompanied by discussion. Along the same lines, in 2009, a partner organization to Local 20/20, the Jefferson County Earth Institute, initiated 25 discussion courses from Portland’s NW Earth Institute called Menu for the Future. These six-week discussion courses each had at least one member who made their living from food (farming, fishing, cheese making…) to inform the conversation with input about the importance of supporting our local food entrepreneurs. The series is discussed in depth in a YouTube video. That same effort was repeated in early 2018, and it includes an extra chapter focused on climate and food developed by the Local 20/20 Climate Outreach group.
In 2021, the Local Food action group of Local 20/20 promoted an Eat Local! campaign that was an effort of the Salish Sea Regional Transition Hub. We also maintain these webpages with various resources including a list of Local Farms, Farmstands and CSAs, recipes using seasonal ingredients for every month of the year, and ideas on garden options.
FEED Jefferson County Map, a project of the Community Wellness project, is a community resource that provides locations and information of School Gardens,Community Gardens, Food Bank Gardens, Farms, and Educational Sources to learn how to start your own plot.
A third goal of LF is to produce a document entitled “Can Jefferson County Feed Itself?”. Land mass, population, and an assessment of what can be grown and where, is all analyzed in an attempt to answer this question. This project is currently awaiting someone to take the lead.
If you are drawn to take action as an individual, you may want to visit our page Things You Can Do, listing ways that you can help promote local food resilience.
The Food Action group is largely dormant currently (2022), as we look for new leadership. If helping create a more sustainable and resilient local food system is of interest, let us know!
For more information, email clf@l2020.org