Image courtesy Loma Farm.
Today we launch our three-week Spring Campaign to support our remarkably successful Food & Farm programs, which grow the local food economy in a number of important ways.
Your donations help us:
- Serve more nutrient-dense local food to children in school cafeterias.
- Improve physician ability to educate patients about healthy local food and increase its use at home.
- Expand access to healthy local food in community food pantries.
- Strengthen the financial health of local farm families, which keeps farms in farming.
When you support Groundwork’s Food & Farming program, you help propel one of the most promising health, economic and environmental transformations in America today: the local food movement. Local food is not just a trend, but an enduring and essential system that improves the well-being of children and adults as it improves the income of local farmers and keeps farmland open.
Fifteen years ago, Groundwork became one of the first organizations in the nation to commit resources, staff and ingenuity to nurturing the early local food industry. We’ve since helped create a local food economy in northwest Lower Michigan that is among the strongest and most respected in the country.
Today our work has marvelous momentum, as we expand local foods in school cafeterias, in food pantries, in grocery stores and even in the doctor’s office! Join us in growing the local food movement!
A key piece of the Groundwork strategy is to incubate good ideas in northwest Lower Michigan and, when proven viable, push them out to the rest of the state and even beyond. One great example is 10 Cents a Meal for School Kids & Farms, which increases the serving of nutrient-dense local food in schools while creating more business for local farmers. We started 10 Cents in Traverse City and it has since expanded to more than half of Michigan counties. Now there’s serious talk of the pilot program expanding statewide. Meanwhile school policymakers from states all over America are studying 10 Cents to copy it. A California legislator recently introduced a bill that would make a program modeled directly on 10 Cents policy for the nation’s most populous state.
That’s Groundwork: strong ideas moved forward with sharp strategy and hard work.
Local food keeps farms in farming and gets healthy food to children and to all of us. Join us to keep the momentum strong and to start the next great thing in local food!
