From all of us here at the Food Web, we wish you happy holidays and a restful end of the year filled with warmth, community, and good food!  Thank you for supporting our work and the incredible community food system we are lucky to be a part of. Check out what we did this holiday season below, and consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our nonprofit programs before the end of the year!

The World Health Organization defines universal health coverage as all people having “access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship.” In the US, we rely heavily on employers to provide this for employees, or many people go without. The Affordable Care Act was a half step in the direction of getting more people covered, but a huge percentage of people who live and work here still experience a reality far from the WHO definition. 

Why am I bringing this up in a newsletter of a local foods organization? For two reasons: mission alignment and mission fulfillment.

Our mission is to create a just and resilient food system. The people who produce our food do challenging physical work, some of which is dangerous and almost all of which is hard to sustain over time. And agricultural workers and food service workers are some of the least likely workers to have health insurance. According to Farmworker Justice, “Fifty-three percent of (agricultural workers) lack any form of health insurance, and only 18 percent have comprehensive health insurance through their employer. Given that the mean income for an agricultural worker family is about $20,000, health care costs are unaffordable for a large number of these families.” Our food supply is heavily subsidized by the bodily pain and stress of millions of low paid workers. We can’t truly create a just and resilient food system without addressing the gap in healthcare that the system relies on to keep cheap food arriving on your plate. 

The second reason is that the Food Web is one of those employers who has taken responsibility to provide health coverage for our employees, and it ain’t cheap. Right now we provide 100% employer paid health and dental insurance, and have a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) program that we provide the first $250 for each year. In 2024, we plan to spend $63,000 on healthcare for our 8 employees. That’s 7% of our organizational budget. 

Like many small businesses (because we are that in addition to being a nonprofit) our budget is tight, this is a big lift, and we could be doing a lot more for our community if we didn’t live in an economic system that makes this our burden to hold. This is in fact the equivalent of a whole other staff position, or 1,500 additional Free Food Boxes, or $63K in micro-grants to directly support our local farmers’ on-farm infrastructure needs. I’m encouraging all of our Food Web supporters to extend that support to advocating for universal healthcare in the US!

2023 has been a year of building systems and laying foundations for future growth. We started the year with one kitchen renter, and now we have 11 local businesses actively using our kitchen (with several more planning on resuming their use when the 2024 market season kicks off).

One such user is Dustin Nord, midwest transplant, artist, chef, and all-around dynamic individual. Nord was recently awarded a Coastal Oregon Artists Residency, where he had the opportunity to showcase his imaginative work that repurposes discarded materials to make art. Nord also recently acquired a small food cart, which will soon serve as another vehicle of his creativity, as he draws on his years of experience as a chef.

We say that NCFW operates most effectively in the growth phase of a business as it moves from “micro to small”. We help facilitate networking conversations, connect with licensing authorities, offer very low-cost commercial kitchen space, and help producers through myriad other challenges, both foreseen and unexpected. All it takes is a small food cart and a big dream.

December also saw another installment of our already popular pie classes with Sarah from Gathered Bakeshop & Market. This time students learned all about pie dough and custard fillings, and made delicious pies filled with roasted heirloom winter squash from Bowpo’s Garden in Forest Grove. There’s nothing wrong with pumpkin puree from a can, but when you can turn beautiful local squash into silky pie filling, well that’s a life skill I don’t want to do without. We roasted Cinderella, Porcelain Doll, and Casperita squashes and used homemade sweetened condensed milk to make the best pumpkin pie filling. What a fun class! Look for more Community Cooking Workshops with some of your favorite local businesses (and people!) in the new year!

✨ Showcasing Farmers & Food Producers

Pop-Ups We saw a great re-start in 2023 to the small producer pop-up on Thursdays during market pick-up.  From baked goods, to homemade beeswax products, candles, candy and farm fresh eggs, we were able to showcase 5 small local producers and plan to increase that in the new year.  2024 looks to bring even more variety with a plant pop-up in the new year and the return of some of our local bakers and candle makers! Stay tuned for your favorite producers and their dates for 2024. It’s always better to shop small and support local! 

Fall Farmer Social Thank you to all of our farmers and small producers that came out to our Fall Social in November! We saw around 20 people in attendance including farmers, small producers, NCFW staff and farmers market managers. Thank you to Bob and Chris from Buoy Beer for an amazing curated food spread with the best ingredients from our NCFW weekly online market of small farmers and producers! The market managers shared some inspiring stats from the year as well as information about their venues for 2024.  NCFW was able to share ideas about events, networking and educational opportunities for the upcoming year while collecting real time feedback about current needs and interest. It was great to gather and connect with everyone after another season of bounty and we are looking forward to working with all of these amazing farmers and producers and more, in 2024! 

*UPCOMING* Producer Talk events in 2024! We will kick off this new NCFW series with Teresa Retzlaff of 46 North Farm. She will be sharing a presentation and talking about dry farming practices in our area.  Teresa is a seasoned veteran farmer in the Clatsop county family and a valued member in any sphere, farming or otherwise. We are are excited to host her in late January to kick off this NEW series for 2024! We hope to encourage peer knowledge sharing, community connection and general knowledge growth around farming and sustainable practices this year and into the future with more opportunities like this.  Look for other Presenters in March, May and October covering topics like raising quail, beekeeping and more. Stay tuned!

The Government Spends Billions on Food. Who Benefits?

Article from Civil Eats

Lawmakers have introduced the EFFECTIVE Food Procurement Act, aiming to transform USDA's food purchasing processes by considering factors such as supply chain resiliency, environmental impact, and labor policies, in addition to cost. The legislation, part of a larger movement for values-aligned food procurement, follows a report by the Federal Good Food Purchasing Coalition revealing that the USDA spent nearly $17 billion on food in 2019 and 2022, with a significant portion going to a few large vendors, raising concerns about fair labor practices and environmental impact in the supply chain.

Upcoming Opportunity for Farmers:

Know Your Cost to Grow Workshop Series

Do you want to make more informed decisions about the prices you need to get for your farm business to be profitable? This starts with knowing your crop-specific costs of production!

Sign-up today for a 4-part virtual workshop series focused on learning to use the costing process and calculation tool in the Know Your Cost To Grow program. The Know Your Cost To Grow program provides multi-crop vegetable farmers with a step-by-step process for determining their crop-specific costs of production and a framework for using cost of production information for business decision-making. The program was developed through a partnership between Oregon Tilth and the Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems at Oregon State University. The goal of this workshop series is to prepare you to do your own crop cost analysis during the 2024 growing season. During the workshop series we will go through the whole KYCTG costing process from set-up through analysis. This will give farmers a clear picture of the cost results that they will get if they complete the costing process and ideas for how they can use crop specific information to make decisions about pricing, production practices and product mix. Learn more and sign up at  http://www.knowyourcosttogrow.com

There are other ways to get involved!

It's the end of the year, so fundraising efforts are probably filling your inbox. But there are other ways to support our mission and strengthen our local food system. What makes NCFW strong is our community of volunteers  and our incredible Board of Directors. Growing our impact and improving our programs wouldn't be possible without them. You can support our work beyond a donation - sign up to volunteer for our Market, or apply to become a Board Member.

1152 Marine Drive

Astoria, OR 97103

503-468-0921

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