Oregon’s North Coast is home to dozens of small, independent food businesses including farmers, ranchers, fishers, and value-added producers. This bountiful region is well known for its diverse variety of foods that are harvested, grown, or produced throughout the year, including beef, pork, lamb, dairy products, fish and shellfish, honey, vegetables, and craft beverages. Food Roots believes that a reinvestment in those who produce, harvest, and sell our local food will nourish our families, revitalize our communities, and grow our economy. Since 2006, Food Roots has been working to support small producers in Tillamook County through a variety of programs that increase access and affordability to local foods, promote healthy eating and garden education in schools, and support economic development of small food and farm businesses. Our projects and activities are divided in three main programs: Farm to School, Local Food Equity and Producer Support. Read below to learn more about our role in Tillamook county’s local food system and how you can support our mission!
Farm to School Program: The National Farm to School Network has summarized research that shows the benefits of Farm to School programming including increasing students’ preferences for fresh fruit and vegetables, improving performance in school (science in particular), and impacting positive social behavior. The programming we provide is rooted in this research: we focus on hands-on activities that encourage inquiry and critical reasoning and prioritize activities that complement Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core ELA and math standards.
We currently partner with five different schools for the 2021-2022 school year: Garibaldi Grade School, Tillamook Junior High, East Elementary, Nestucca Valley Elementary and Nestucca Valley Early Learning Center. Every week, our farm to school educator visits classrooms to bring enriching garden-based lessons. We also organize school-wide tastings that feature a vegetable grown by a local producer and organize field trips to local farms. Every month we are engaging with over 750 students!
Producer Support: Food Roots is a provider of Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). IDAs are a matched savings program that enables low to moderate income entrepreneurs to save money to either start or expand a food system business. Food Roots’ IDA participants receive a 3:1 match on their IDA savings, meaning that for every $1 a participant saves, the program will match it with $3. Participants can save a combined total of $12,000 in savings and matched funds over three years. In addition to consistent monthly savings, participants learn important business skills such as cash‐flow projection, financial management, and marketing through free, required classes provided by partners like the local community college, Oregon State University Agricultural Extension, and local financial institutions. Once participants have reached their savings goal and completed the required classes, they can use the money to finance business‐related expenses.
In the past few years, we have expanded our support to producers with the opening of our brick and mortar storefront, Food Roots Marketplace (formerly FarmTable). Opened in February 2018, Food Roots Marketplace has proven a popular outlet to connect our community and its visitors directly to our area’s food producers and their products. We feature over 50 local vendors and a variety of value-added products and fresh local produce that are stocked weekly. Customers can choose to visit our storefront (open weekly from Tuesday to Friday from 2-5:30pm) or shop online by visiting our website foodrootsnw.org (click on the “Online Marketplace” button on the top left). The online ordering window opens every Tuesday at 5:30pm and closes on Saturday at 11:59pm. The addition of the online platform has created an efficient system that allows producers to only harvest what they have sold. Producers update their inventory with produce that is available on the farm. Once the ordering window closes on Saturday, farmers check what they have sold on Sunday and bring all the orders to the store on Monday. When the store opens on Tuesday, all the orders are packed and ready to be picked up at our store! As part of our mission of making local food more accessible, we have also added a delivery program that brings online orders to the customer’s front door or to one of our 3 pick-up site locations spread across the county (Wheeler, Netarts and Cloverdale).
Local Food Equity: We believe everyone in Tillamook should have access to healthy, fresh, local food, so we have a few programs to increase affordability. Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) is a SNAP (formerly called Food Stamps) matching program that incentivizes federal benefit food dollars to be spent on locally grown food at farmers markets and grocery stores that sell local food. At Food Roots Marketplace, we expand on Double Up Food Bucks, by doubling the matching program and expanding it to all SNAP-eligible food items. Using additional internal funds and community fundraising, SNAP shoppers can save up to $20 on every order!
Through this savings program, SNAP shoppers can also save up to $250 on CSA shares. CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a model that provides customers with weekly boxes of fresh, seasonal produce, while supporting farmers with income early in their growing season. We partner with local farms to make CSA shares available at Food Roots Marketplace. CSA shares generally run from June through October or November. We will soon post sign-up information for CSA shares on our website, so stay tuned!
Finally, we partner with various organizations that serve socially-disadvantaged groups to provide bounty boxes- a limited time subscription to locally sourced, seasonal products that are delivered weekly. SNAP shoppers that sign-up for a bounty box receive half-off.
Food Roots relies on our strong community partners to accomplish our mission. Food Roots is the north coast hub lead for the Oregon Farm to School and School Garden Network, a member of the Oregon Community Food Systems Network, and a leader in the Tillamook County Wellness coalition, a ten-year initiative to reduce and prevent diabetes through access to healthy food, physical activity, workplace wellness and screenings. Without volunteers and community support, none of these programs would be possible. Please consider donating and/or volunteering or contact Food Roots for ways you can help us in our mission to cultivate a healthy food system in Tillamook County.
AUTHOR: Carol Parks, Program Manager at Food Roots
Other wellness questions? Email us at info@tillamookcountywellness.org. For more local health and wellness information, visit www.tillamookcountywellness.org or follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook and Instagram.