Mobile Poultry Processing Unit Planning Meeting

Research Services Bldg. Room 130

OARDC Wooster Campus

Work is progressing to develop an ODA approved mobile poultry processing unit. A large working group has met several times to brainstorm how a mobile unit and management system could be implemented. We toured the mobile unit that has just been built in Galion, Ohio, that will be shipped to the state of Vermont.

At the most recent meeting of the Food Systems Assessment Task Force, we discussed some of the options for one or more goals that might be set for Ohio food systems.  Having such a target would give specific direction on long-term assessment of food systems and is very important in evaluating the impact of recommendations made by the Council.  Following is a distillation of the ideas generated in the discussion, so that you can be thinking about what the Council might recommend as one or more goals or targets (if you're reading this in your email, click the link after “Read more”).

Attached are the meeting minutes of the Ohio Food Policy Council for June of 2008.  Please feel free to review the minutes and share you ideas and suggestiions.

Sincerely,

Amalie Lipstreu 

The Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council will be meeting from 1:00pm -3:00 pm. in Auditorium A at the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The Council was created by Executive Order by Governor Strickland in August of 2007 and is working to increase the percentage of food grown, processed and consumed in Ohio and ensuring access to food for all Ohioans.

If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Amalie Lipstreu, Senior Program Manager for Sustainable Agriculture at the Ohio Department of Agriculture, 614.466.6198.

The Food System Assessment Task Force of the Ohio Food Policy Council will be meeting on Thursday, July 31st from 1:00-3:00 pm. in room #308 at the Ohio Department of Agriculture. This is part of the ongoing work of the Food Policy Council to collect and analyze information on the production and processing of food in Ohio as well as the patterns of food consumption.

If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Amalie Lipstreu, Senior Program Manager for Sustainable Agriculture at the Ohio Department of Agriculture, 614.466.6198.

The Agricultural Viability Task Force of the Ohio Food Policy will be meeting from 1:30-3:30 at the Ohio Department of Agriculture in Reynoldsburg. This is part of the Food Policy Council's ongoing work to protect Ohio farmland and water resources by encouraging the growth of food products in Ohio.

If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Amalie Lipstreu, Senior Program Manager for Sustainable Agriculture at the Ohio Department of Agriculture, 614.466.6198.

The Market Connections Task Force of the Ohio Food Policy Council will be meeting from 1-3:00 on July 21st, at the North Market in Columbus. This is part of the ongoing work to connect producers and consumers in local food systems and assist producers in marketing their products.

If you have questions or would like more information, please contact Amalie Lipstreu, Senior Program Manager for Sustainable Agriculture at the Ohio Department of Agriculture, 614.46.6198.

Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council meeting. We are scheduled to meet from 1:00-3:00 pm. in the Bromfield Administration Building auditorium

This is a reminder that we have a Food Policy Advisory Council Meeting on Monday, June 2nd from 1:00-3:00pm. An e-mail will be sent to everyone with an agenda by the end of this week. All task forces also have meeting dates set as follows:

Listed in the attachmemt are the Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council task forces. Please be aware that other people will be involved with these task forces in the very near future. The task forces will have an organizational/goal setting meeting to be sure and include individuals from around the state who can contribute to the work of the task forces and the goals of the Governor's Executive Order.

Thank you and I look forward to working with you in my "official capacity" starting next week!

Amalie Lipstreu

Attached are the minutes from the Food Policy Advisory Council meeting of April 28th. Please note the clarifed definition of the four task force areas.

All task forces are to meet before our next scheduled full council meeting on June 2nd from 1:00-3:00pm. at ODA.

If you have not used the online scheduler please do so OR call 614.466.6198 and leave a message by Monday, May 19th with your meeting availability for the task force(s) you are signed up with. You may visit the website links under each task force area to see suggested dates and times.

Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has prepared an analysis of farm bill policy relating to conservation and local food systems development.

Use the link below to read the snapshot-many positive developments around beginning farmers, agricultural viability and local food systems.

http://www.sustainableagriculturecoalition.org/ActionCenter/FarmBill08Snapshot_Memo.pdf

Amalie Lipstreu

Okay, for all of you folks like me who are part of that second category that I talked about at the Food Policy Council meeting (the ones who will use this tool if encouraged) I am hereby encouraging.

This is my first-ever blog post. I have nothing to say, but thought that I should take a few minutes to learn and familiarize myself with the blog and how to use it. So, if you have a non-response to my non-entry just to break the ice...give it a try. It only took me a couple of minutes. The most challenging part was going back in my emails to find my username and password.

Thank you to everyone who attended the last OFPAC meeting on the 28th. I look forward to working with you in a different capacity starting later this month as I manage the work of the council. The minutes from the last meeting should be coming in the next week or so.

I've been thinking over the points about scale of both marketing and farming that arose at the first Council meeting. We may want to set a specific goal for growth in local food sales in Ohio. The Kellogg Foundation Food and Society program set a goal last year of 10% of national food sales by 2017, and consider that to be pretty audacious. I'm not sure that there is a good estimate of current Ohio sales but the estimates I have seen for regions within Ohio are 1% or less of current food sales from local sources.

Ohio Department of Agriculture's Bromfield Administration Building

The Food Policy Council Advisory Committee minutes, as sent by Patti Haden today, are attached and can be downloaded again from the attachment link if needed. If Council members would like to comment, clarify or add to the minutes, they may use the comment link to this message and the complete record of these comments, clarifications and additions will be stored together on this site for reference. If the comment feature is used, then Council members will also receive an email when the comments are posted, with a link to view the comment.

When creating blog posts on the site, you can post images "inline" (in your blog post).

How to do it:

Step number one is to click on the "insert/edit image" button on the editor:

Now, you can either paste in the website address ("URL") of the image, if it is on another page, or you can upload and insert the image.

To paste in a url, just enter it in next to "Image URL" space illustrated below.

In response to Tom Price's suggestion of a blog site for the Council, I offered this one to Director Boggs since it's already set up and most of you were already subscribed. This site is about making it easy for you to communicate with fellow Council members, and also with a wider community of those involved in the Ohio food system. Here are the basics on using it (and there is a help menu at the top of the page as well):