Agriculture is the largest single industry in all of Appalachia including Ohio’s Southeast Appalachian region. This beautiful land is literally peppered with small produce farms most of which are not providing a decent living for even a single family. We are losing 10% of those farms every year; we lose not only jobs, capital, quality of life, but we also lose access to the highest quality produce in the United States. That’s why the Appalachian Nutrition Network has decided to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables from local farmers.
We are starting with a pilot program at 16 of our sites. We are starting small because we want to work out all the “bugs” the first year and then gradually expand to where we are serving nature’s most precious food to children throughout our Ohio and West Virginia Summer Food Service sites.
We have borrowed a slogan, Fresher By Thousands of Miles, from one of our nation’s most advanced sustainable agriculture projects, The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project located in North Carolina, see www.asapconnections.org. We feel that this slogan connects all sustainable agriculture projects throughout Appalachia and simply cannot be improved upon. This project is environmentally sound, improves nutrition, fights hunger, and brings sorely needed capital into Appalachia. It just doesn’t get any better than that!
We want to thank our partners in this venture (see links on home page):
Washington and Athens County Extension
Rural Action
The brave farmers of southeast Ohio
