Description

In 2011, Shagbark Seed & Mill started piloting a price class as part of a small enterprise grant received from the Wallace Center HUFED program. The below market pricing is exclusively for food access programs--and offers distributor pricing to schools, food banks, church groups and others that feed those who are food insecure. We call this program, Good Food for All–a strategy to make high-nutrition whole grains, beans, and oilseed products part of rural economic development and food access– a critical next step toward improving health outcomes among the poor in our region and to building regional economies around local food production.  We are looking for collaborators from Food Access Programs and Local Food Businesses, as well as funding to convene stakeholders and plan this concept and brand.

Shagbark Seed & Mill has sold to the Southeast Ohio Regional Food Bank, Summer Food sites for kids, the Tri County Career Center, Local Matters in Columbus, Job & Family Services, Athens Health Dept./Live Healthy Appalachia’s Food Pantry Project, and Community Food Initiatives. To increase the potential impact of Good Food for All, we devised a marketing plan that proposes branding Good Food for All as a partnership with food access programs and other food producers and processors to pitch local healthy food as a strategy that simultaneously addresses reducing hunger and building food economies in food insecure regions.

The Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative seeks  $25,000 to develop the Good Food for All brand by convening food access and business partners to assess their capacity to buy and sell at this lower rate, and create the branding materials necessary to  market the concept and enlarge its scope to include other regionally produced crops. We want to include those who grow and process fresh fruits, dairy products, and vegetables so Good Food for All offers our region’s food access programs a complete line of locally produced food. By joining together, good quality food to schools and food access programs will create an enterprise strategy that can fill the plates set out by hunger programs with good grain, vegetables, dairy, fruit, beans and more.

Please contact us for more information about how you can help us take this step.

Contact-
Michelle Ajamian,  Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative          740-590-1501     goodfooddirect@gmail.com

Proposed Location

Athens, Ohio

Visibility

Public - accessible to all site users