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Posts Tagged ‘Farmers Market Survey’

Mid-December Update

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 12, 2008 |

December 12th,
Most recently I have made connections with Nutrition educators in NNY regarding this project. As well have made contact with Campus project partners. Will be meeting with Jo Swanson on Monday (December 15th) regarding this project. Jennifer Wilkins has asked to be kept abreast of this project while she is in Italy.

Research for Local Food indicators from Duncan and the Farmers Market Survey data from Todd have arrived this week. With this research added to the report from NCRFI I have the data sets I needed in order to conduct the thorough needs assessment. I am confident that I will be able to meet the scheduled timeline for reporting to the EDs in the region.

Yesterday, we (Dave, Dick, Carl & I) were able to establish our schedule for regular progress meetings for the coming year.  We were able to clarify and work through many of the questions that we had surrounding this project.  I was please with our progress and feel much more secure in the tasks I have ahead of me.

Regarding the NCRFI – Report: Katherine & I have been getting price quotes from printing firms in the area.  We will review the most economical and move forward with getting the report printed, and distributed to the counties in the region.   Next steps is to schedule roadshow for talks with local government etc in each county regarding the results of the NCRFI project.  We would like to have the hard copies of the reports in hand for these presenations, so we can leave them with the counties.  Each CCE office will be provided with some for use in their counties as well the digital version of the reports and fact sheets will be posted on the NNYADP website in the Regional/Local foods section of this site.

Regarding the Farmers Market Surveys:  Todd Schmit has offered to keep Allyson Brimmer-Jones on his payroll so she can finalize the data crunching, reports and any articles on this material.  Allyson and I will take the lead on getting these items completed.  These will need to be completed by the end of January as Allyson is going abroad to study in February.  Todd will continue to take the lead on the ecnometric modeling work that he hopes will provide some useful planning information for managers and vendors to improve success.  We plan to share this will the farmers markets across the region asap once the reports are completed.

Until next time
take care
Bernadette

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And the rest of the time …

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 3, 2008 |

Wow it is hard to believe that October flew by with record speed, or so it seemed.  This month has been spent largely getting prepped for this project, working out the kinks and filling in the outreach agreements from the last year’s North Country Regional Foods Initiative (NCRFI).

Update from 2007-08 NCRFI — the final report is pretty much completed, thank you Heidi from CaRDI at Cornell University.  She has been moving this along.  The final report arrived in my mailbox today for the regional team’s final comments to be submitted before this Wednesday.  Overall it looks awesome.  We did some great work in a short time.

Since my last posting:  I attended the Strategic Marketing Conference in Poughkeepsie.  The focus on the conference was on food safety.  We did cover that but not as in depth as I would have liked to see.  Made some great new connections and reconnected with old acquaintances.

Todd Schmit promises that we will have the data from the Summer Farmers Market Surveys by the November Ag Inservice, so watch this blog for links to that too.

Things I picked up at the conference:

Jim Prevor, Founder & Editor of Perishible Pundit and Produce Business opened the conference with a great talk about trends in food, why we are seeing and hearing about more food borne illness ‘outbreaks’ and what this means for local food.  Jim also joined our table for lunch so had a great opportunity for further networking and sharing.

New Business in town — check out Isidore Foods where David Eson is giving a new twist to an old concept of subscription farming.

Also, Paul Esposito from Railex was the capstone speaker for the conference and he gave us an indepth look at how Railex is ensuring food safety and tracking the products they are shipping across the country.

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