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Growing opportunities: Rural FoodCorps creates access to local foods

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RONAN – It’s no secret the Mission Valley has its fair share of local farmers producing a wealth of local food. The question is, where does the food go? The unfortunate answer is — mostly other places.

This is what Lindsay Howard and the Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center are working to change.

Together, Howard and MMFEC seek to improve the local economy and keep more locally grown food at home by facilitating an increase in the purchase of locally grown foods, and bringing them into area schools. Howard, a FoodCorps service member, recently moved to the Mission Valley from North Carolina for a 12-month position with MMFEC. Her position, part of FoodCorps’ Montana Rural Food Project, is funded by the USDA and is a subprogram of AmeriCorps VISTA.

According to their website, FoodCorps is a national school garden and Farm to School service program.

FoodCorps’ parent program AmeriCorps VISTA is a national service program devoted to fighting poverty. Approximately 6,500 VISTA members are placed each year in more than 1,200 projects in low-income communities around the country.

In order to be a FoodCorps host site, an area or town’s school must have at least 50 percent of its students receiving free or reduced lunch.

Launched in 2006 as a pilot project in partnership between the Grow Montana Coalition and Montana Campus Compact, FoodCorps has expanded to include projects in 13 states including seven project sites in Montana. A major success of the initial program came from the Salish Kootenai College site, where a zero-to-10 percent increase in purchases from Montana food vendors occurred in one year. It is estimated that overall the six initial sites returned $2.5 million to Montana food producers through purchases.

Some of the program’s other accomplishments include Montana State University launching a student vegetable farm, and the University of Montana Western purchasing local beef, which stimulated discussions about building their own processing facility.

This year is the first of three years that MMFEC will be a host site for FoodCorps.

“I’m here to teach people and give them opportunities to get involved,” Howard explained.

Howard’s short-term goals include distributing educational materials at the Polson Farmers Market about utilizing the SNAP program to purchase locally grown foods, and introducing some of Montana’s specialty foods into school lunches and snacks.

The Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center’s long-term goals are to ensure access to safe, fresh, nutritious, and affordable local and regional food. Other goals include stimulating the economic recovery of rural communities by recapturing the food dollars leaving Montana and creating jobs.

Lastly, MMFEC wants to increase farm and ranch economic viability by providing opportunities for diversifying farm and ranch production.

According to Howard, the first local food she wants to bring to area schools is lentil burgers, which are readily available throughout Montana and highly nutritious.

She added that this is the first year FoodCorps has sought to engage residents in farm to school, healthy food classroom curriculum in rural communities.

During her time here, Howard hopes to work with area schools to help them incorporate local, healthy foods into their school lunches.

For more information about the Montana Rural Food Project, call 676-5901 and ask for Lindsay.

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