Merrymeeting Gleaners Summer Update

Celebrating 100,000 lbs and the community built with Merrymeeting Gleaners volunteers, representatives of recipient sites and farmers. Volunteers organized a CSA share donation to thank Gleaning Coordinator, Kelly Davis, for all of her tremendous wo…

Celebrating 100,000 lbs and the community built with Merrymeeting Gleaners volunteers, representatives of recipient sites and farmers. Volunteers organized a CSA share donation to thank Gleaning Coordinator, Kelly Davis, for all of her tremendous work.

Projects:

  • Know Your Veggies: The gleaners wrapped up a project with SNAP-ED to develop a booklet called "Know Your Veggies". This booklet is a tool to help people receiving the gleaned produce to know how to identify it, store it, cook it, etc. The booklet has been distributed to the organizations that receive the produce. It is also available for free to download here.

  • Sharing Tables: There are now SIX sharing tables set up on a weekly basis (Arrowsic, Bath, Brunswick, Bowdoin, Harpswell, Topsham). We have a team of Sharing Table volunteers that are take care of the set up and break down each week. We are using a check mark system at each of the tables to track the number of users while still keeping it anonymous. 

  • Gleaning: In July, the gleaners passed 100,000 pounds of produce donated since 2016. On September 15th, volunteers from the Merrymeeting Gleaners, representatives of organizations receiving gleaned produce, and farmers joined to celebrate reaching 100,000 lbs and the community being built through this project. We are gleaning 5 days a week at 3 farms and 3 farmers markets. 100,000 lbs! news coverage. Like many of our partners, we worked to support asylum seekers who arrived in Maine earlier this summer.

  • As a short term approach to assist with farm labor challenges, the gleaners are officially offering to visit farms and help with specific tasks in exchange for a food donation. Farms can complete this request form which is also linked on the MFC website.

  • Anne McKee, our Bowdoin Summer Fellow worked as a Team Leader at Scatter Good Farm, worked at the LOCAL Garden and conducted 1:1 interviews with our recipient organizations. Key takeaways from the interviews were that overall they feel the partnership is working very well and there is a lot of excitement about the Know Your Veggies booklet. The one common issue cited was the need for produce bags at the sites. Solutions are being considered. See a video Anne created about her experience here.

  • Processing: Merrymeeting Gleaners and Turtle Rock Farm continue to work on additional processing efforts to preserve the summer bounty and extend the availability of local produce through the winter.

Connections/Outreach:

  • New connections built in Arrowsic, with the Village Clubhouse in Topsham, and with Opportunity Enterprises in Bath.

  • We have had several pop-up gleans this summer at farms we have not worked with in the past. This is a great way for farms to test if gleaning is a good fit for them.

Action Items:

  • Organizations interested in receiving gleaned produce and farms interested in donating produce can contact Kelly.

  • Volunteers interested in gleaning or distributing food can contact Kelly and she will send you the links to sign up. Please spread this info to any potential volunteers! 

Proposed SNAP Policy Changes - Public Comment Period until September 23rd

The USDA proposed changes to the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

To read the full proposal: Regulations.gov Document IDFNS-2018-0037-0001 (download PDF)

The public comment period for proposed changes to SNAP will end on September 23, 2019.

USDA releases report: "Household Food Security in the United States in 2018"

The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) released a new report on Food Security in US Households in September 2019. Read below for more information about the report and see the links at the end to download the full report or the report summary.

From the USDA ERS website…

“Food security means access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.”

“ERS plays a leading role in Federal research on food security and food security measurement in U.S. households and communities and provides data access and technical support to social science scholars to facilitate their research on food security. ERS research focuses on:

  • Food security in U.S. households (see annual report below).

  • Food security's impact on the well-being of children, adults, families, and communities.

  • Food security's relationship to public policies, public assistance programs, and the economy.

Household Food Security in the United States in 2018

ERS has produced several interactive data visualizations on food security and food insecurity. See: Interactive Charts and Highlights.”

Read the Full Report

Read the Report Summary

How to build a story of food system change...

From Maine Food Strategy

Liberation Farms. 2019.

Liberation Farms. 2019.

Big systems issues -- prevalent hunger in communities or the loss of several hundred small Maine farms over the last five years, or the impacts of climate change on Maine fisheries --- don’t get solved by one group or one organization working alone.  We all know the food system has many moving parts. When we talk about wanting a “better” or “stronger” food system, what does that look like in practical terms and what will it take to get there? How do we know if anyone is actually better off?

Results Based Accountability (RBA) is an evaluation process developed by Mark Friedman, founder of the Fiscal Policy Studies Institute, to help public and private sector agencies, communities, school districts, towns, states and nations be more accountable for the collective impact of their efforts

While no one group, state agency or business can “solve” our system issues, a single group can help feed more kids in a community or promote the farms in their county or helping businesses reduce energy costs and carbon emissions. RBA uses large population level indicators (such as the number of farms in Maine or state food insecurity rates in a county) to understand trends in a system. Combined with quantifiable impact data from programs or organizations working on specific issues, RBA can be used to help networks understand whether large-scale change is happening, and whether people and communities are better off as a result.

Maine has a large network working to strengthen and improve its food system. Maine Food Strategy is using its website to share trend data and case studies on programs and organizations making a measurable difference in improving the food system.  Over time, the initiative hopes this information will help Maine better understand where trends in it’s food system are headed, where the combined results of work in communities are affecting large-scale change - and where they’re not. 

Using “The Framework” a tool developed through a participatory planning process to identify broadly supported goals for improving Maine’s food system, Maine Food Strategy is highlighting programs such as Liberation Farms. 

Liberation Farms is an example of a program supporting Goal V of the Framework: “Food insecure individuals and communities in Maine have access to resources that address their needs.” The program provides New American farmers access and resources to produce food for themselves, their families and their communities. Started in 2014 with 20 family farmers on three acres of leased land, Liberation Farms four years later had increased land access to 35 acres with more than 140 family farmers working the land. More details on the impact of Liberation Farms and RBA are at MaineFoodStrategy.org.  

Community food councils have other successful examples of programs making positive changes in Maine.  Food Councils and others are encouraged to add their achievements to case studies featured on mainefoodstrategy.org. Upload your own story directly or contact Maine Food Strategy at mfs@mainefoodstrategy.org.

Tourism Opportunity for Maine Food System Businesses

From the Maine Office of Tourism…

Time for You to Tap Into Tourism

Each year, the Maine Office of Tourism spends millions of dollars to promote Maine as a vacation destination through paid advertising (print, TV and online), e-newsletters, social media, quarterly digital magazine and proactive public relations. Their efforts successfully drive traffic to VisitMaine.com and all the Maine businesses listed there, resulting in 1.9 million unique visits in 2018!

Is your tourism related business taking advantage of this FREE opportunity to be seen by the millions of people interested in visiting Maine each year? If not, what are you waiting for?

It’s so easy and it takes just a few minutes to create your basic business listing. And, it gets even better with step by step instructions, options to expand your listing with photos, videos, logos and PDFs of your brochures or menus, etc., and the ability to promote specials, deals and events you are hosting. 

And did we mention it’s FREE!

Don’t wait - click here to set up your account and select the “First Time Login” button. There are step by step instructions on the left to help you create your listing. If you get stuck, call Greg Gadberry at (207) 624-9827 or send him an email. 



Food Access in the Merrymeeting Bay Region- Roundtable

Merrymeeting Food Council (MFC) had a great turnout for their first roundtable event on June 20th focused on food access in the Merrymeeting Bay region. Four presentations covered barriers to food access: from transportation to stigma, and solutions including: food security screening in healthcare settings, the BackPack program, and a volunteer led effort to build community and food access through free weekly community meals. Food access is a complex issue impacting all of us and the solutions needed require meeting both short and long-term needs and must range in scale, as represented by these presenters, from large healthcare institution to one community’s volunteer group. These presentations served as inspiration for subsequent small group discussions focused on potential solutions related to transportation, farm based programs, healthcare based programs, community based programs, and more.

You can see the presentation slides here: 1) MFC Intro, 2) MFC Community Food Access and Wellness Assessment Overview, 3) Mid Coast Hospital - Hunger Vital Signs Program, 4) Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program - BackPack Program, 5) Harpswell Aging at Home - Lunch with Friends and Meals in a Pinch Programs.

If you would like to be connected with any of the presenters or learn more, please contact us.

In our work to address the challenge of not knowing what resources exist locally for accessing food, MFC created community nutrition resource guides for our region and also created Know Your Veggies in partnership with Maine SNAP-Ed. The Know Your Veggies booklet includes pictures and recipes for 50 commonly grown, and gleaned, vegetables in Maine.

Merrymeeting Food Council Update

As we shift into spring and the growing season, albeit slowly, things have been busy around MFC and our winter planning and work is ready to bear fruit. See our Community Nutrition Resource Guides and our Know Your Veggies booklet with recipes and information about 50 types of gleaned produce is in the final stages. Both resources aim to reduce barriers to food access for our communities. 

MFC has spent the last several months asking our community about barriers to food access through interviews with individuals and organizations. At a community conversation on June 20th, MFC will share key points that we heard from you. Partners from Mid Coast Hospital, Harpswell Aging at Home, and Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program will briefly share examples of community-based programs working to reduce food access barriers and build community. And together we can discuss a broad range of solutions.

Many of us don’t eat the foods we know we should be eating. On a daily basis, innumerable things can prevent us from doing so: lack of time for shopping, cooking, or sitting down for a meal; limited resources to divide between food, transportation, healthcare, heating and other expenses; lack of access to a space equipped to prepare a meal; the absence of a store within 10 miles that stocks fresh produce; the reluctance to seek out food or transportation assistance because we don’t want to ask for help; the list of barriers is long.

Yet, the food choices we make on a daily basis have a significant impact on our health. Center for Disease Control data shows that 66% of the population in MFC’s service area is either overweight or obese and that 82% of the population eats less than the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day, with 44% eating only one or two servings per day. Maine ranks first in New England for rates of obesity and Type II diabetes. And chronic diet-related diseases including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes are higher for individuals experiencing food insecurity.

Maine also ranks first in New England for rates of food insecurity, and the number of our community members experiencing temporary or chronic food insecurity is rising. While rates of food insecurity are dropping in most states, Maine’s rates have risen over recent years (2004-2016). One in four children in Maine is food insecure. Our food choices and subsequent well-being, regardless of the reason, have impacts throughout our communities and economy. Read more about food and healthcare...

Let’s come together as a region and community to generate solutions. Hope to see you on the 20th! Registration is free, but required so we can ensure enough food.

Spring Food System News

- FOOD & HEALTHCARE: Read about some examples of work connecting food and healthcare.

- FARMS: The slow start to spring has been a challenge for farmers throughout the region and nation. In Unity, a new Credit Union focused on agricultural businesses is scheduled to open soon. Read more about the ups and downs of farmers' markets and CSAs locally and nationally. Read more about changes in farmland availability in Maine and nationwide.

- SCHOOLS & EDUCATION: Maine DOE's pilot Harvest of the Month program for schools began in April, contact Jenn So for more information (207-624-6639). Learn more about how youth in Maine are engaging with agriculture from a recent MPR story and learn about an ag education program in Fryeburg. Find Summer Meal sites throughout Maine, or text "summer meals" to 97779.

- POLICY: Catch up on some of the recent and pending food system policy changes. 

- CONNECT: The Maine Food Atlas is ready and waiting for your business information to be entered. 

- PLANNING: Learn about the New England Food Vision and how we can move, regionally, toward a more sustainable food system.