Dear Friend of Fairfield County Agriculture and Local Food:
In addition to affecting our health and our lives for two years, the COVID pandemic has at times affected the availability of some foods. Among the federal recovery dollars made available to families, businesses and local governments were grants to address supply-chain challenges.
Fairfield County commissioners determined the importance of using a portion of this money to conduct a 10-year update of the 2011 Fairfield Growing plan for local food and agricultural economic development. A wide-ranging group of farmers, advocacy groups, local government officials, business leaders, academics, farm-organization representatives, health professionals, educators, and others, has met in teams over several months to delve into data and seek solutions to the challenge of strengthening the region’s agricultural economy, and will complete the plan in March 2022.
This survey focuses on the local-food preferences and availability portion of the plan. It also is an update of the Fairfield Growing 2015 Local Food Survey. The survey should not take more than 10 or 15 minutes of your time, and it is crucial to efforts to complete and carry out the Fairfield Growing update. It will help guide ongoing efforts for farmers to produce more of what consumers in Fairfield and surrounding counties want, to make it more readily available to all people in the region, to create food and agriculture jobs, and to strengthen the agricultural economy.
We invite you to complete the survey at go.osu.edu/fclocalfoodsurvey or scan the QR code.The survey will remain open until February 21st.
Thank you for your participation!
If you would like to learn more about the importance of the Local Food Survey be sure to listen to the 88.9FM Saturday Morning Farm Page Interview with Carrie Brown and Erin Harvey of Keller Market House. Click on this recording link 220209_003
Carrie Brown, Fairfield County AgNR Extension Educator
On behalf of the Fairfield Growing Steering Committee