The Food Policy Council

After scheduling and rescheduling, scheduling conflicts and ultimately just flat out cancellations, i expected what is ordinarily our community gathering night to be a quiet night with our lovely friends Damien and Renee. A warm pot of potato/cabbage soup, a salad of mixed goodies (sorry about the spinach guys), some sghetti and sauce, and a tasty stuffing based dish filled our bellies, and kept the kitchen warm as the temperatures outside took a big nose dive.
Coversation followed full bellies and we managed to stuff in a few more bites of an absolutely scruptuous apple cobbler! i am so blessed to have friends that can cook!

This week Amy and i were asked to sit in on a meeting for what is to become the Saco Valley Regional Food Policy Council. Big fancy name for a bunch of people that came together to eat good food and talk about our shared concerns for local food sustainability, biosecurity, and the plight of the poor.
There were people from the local town council, representatives from various food pantries, local citizens, reps from local CSA farms, old folks, young folks, American born and immigrants. It was cool!
The whole shebang was initiated by a guy named Stu, Rebecca (the poohbah for the local food pantry), and Richard (who is the head of a local organic farm). Our first meeting was to introduce people to each other, the organizations involved, and what exactly a Food Policy Council is. Two hours later we new who each other were, and the organizations involved. . . but what are we doing? i still don't think we know.
With so many people, our focus was to figure out what our purpose together would be, but it turned into a mass presentation of local concerns (not necessarily a bad thing). At the end it sounded to me as the largest concerns were sustainable farming, local food education (no, not teaching the veggies a thing or two), local growing/farming education, feeding the poor healthier foods, and garnering community support and volunteers.
After two hours we concluded that there was just too much and too many people to reign in all the ideas, so we have opted to assemble a smaller group from the meeting tonight to go through the list of ideas, thoughts, and concerns and try to develop a focused mission statement. . . Sounds kind of official. . . yuck!
i like to remember that the best changes for good in the world happen among people sharing their time and lives together. On the whole if we want to effect real change in the world we have to start in our homes with ourselves and our families, reaching out to our neighbors and friends, then our neighborhoods, and their friends. . .
Maybe there was something to Reagan's trickle down (economics) system. . .

More to Food Policy to follow as events unravel. . .