Regional Food Solutions


Picture cities and towns lush with green: Fertile farmland, rooftop gardens, delicious food. Consider local farmers making a good living raising crops that are healthy for people and the land. How about children sitting down to wholesome, fresh-cooked meals at school?

This future is now! Families and communities are making it happen because they know they must, and because it’s satisfying and fun.

Patty Cantrell of Regional Food Solutions works with clients and collaborators to support this powerful food and farm evolution. READ MORE

Local demand re-shaping market links from farmer to consumer

November 4, 2011
Van Buren County blueberry grower Pedro Bautista is one of the founders of the new Farmers on the Move cooperative and brand. Photo credit: Patty Cantrell

Consumer demand for new taste, transparency, and trust in their food is in fact spurring a new business model – a food value chain —that some entrepreneurs are embracing.

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Food innovation districts work

November 4, 2011
Food innovation districts work

It’s widely understood in economic development circles that if you want new entrepreneurs to start up and grow, a good strategy is to bring them together and let the creativity roll. A good example is People’s Pierogi Collective, which grew in one year from a startup hot food cart at Detroit’s Eastern Market to contract [...]

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Making way for cottage food entrepreneurs

November 4, 2011
Making way for cottage food entrepreneurs

Nayyirah Shariff is on her way to an entrepreneur’s life of making signature products, employing local people, and investing in her home state of Michigan. The young woman from Flint has her marching orders from customers who have lined up every week to buy her sweet and savory fresh-baked, organic artisan breads. Now she’s putting [...]

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Cracks in Produce Supply Chain Show Local Food Potential

October 28, 2011
Cracks in Produce Supply Chain Show Local Food Potential

America’s ever-adaptive produce delivery system is coming to grips with a local food movement that may have more traction than meets the eye.

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Wanted: Grassroots Push for Good Food Programs

October 28, 2011
Renee DeWindt sources dozens of local farm products as school food service champion in Michigan's Benzie and Onekama schools.

Michigan residents will play an important role in the 2012 Food and Farm Bill. The butterflies, young farmers, and school lunches need you, Michigan.

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Financing measure could boost farm production in food deserts

July 22, 2011
Rural and urban communities lack access to quality fresh food.

By Bob Heuer & Patty Cantrell First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity moved forward Wednesday with her announcement that grocery chains have agreed to open or expand 1,500 stores in urban and rural “food deserts” nationwide.  She did not say who would be growing all the anticipated fruits and vegetables. Many believe local [...]

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Flowers in Cornwall. Food in Cincinnati.

February 25, 2011
Flowers in Cornwall. Food in Cincinnati.

The Flower Train video tells the story of people and place, and of time and tides of change, which expose what is always here — the ground of our being — even as surface conditions wash here and there.

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A Foodshed Building Idea

February 14, 2011
Growers, processors and others in the San Diego foodshed are planning a regional food hub.

SOLUTION:

Think in terms of the “foodshed,” the people, places, and purposes behind all this local food business. We’re talking the geography of relationships, values, and outcomes when a region takes an interest in feeding itself. Case in Point: The California Food Hub Network.

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New Tool to Help Banks and Small Farms Communicate

October 31, 2010
The small and highly diverse Mighty Food Farm in Pownal, VT, is an example of the paradigm-shifting generation of new farmers that are challenging for banks used to more conventional farming businesses.

Over the last 20 years, credit-scoring systems have made it easier for banks to analyze risk and make loans to the diverse world of small businesses, from car dealerships to coffee shops. Now a group of sustainable agriculture leaders are working on a similar tool to help banks work with the new, paradigm-shifting generation of small and diverse food and farm entrepreneurs.

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No foothold for Wal-Mart in Germany. But local food still loses.

October 13, 2010
No foothold for Wal-Mart in Germany. But local food still loses.

Five years ago, the international discount giant Wal-Mart started setting up shop in Germany, one of the last frontiers on Wal-Mart’s road to world domination of consumer product and grocery sales.

Today, Wal-Mart’s blue and white megastores are nowhere to be seen in this land of thousands of brands of local sausages and beer. But it was no local-economy protecting protestors that sent the big retailer packing. Quite the opposite.

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