Capital Region food system assessment hosts initial forum

TROY, N.Y. >> More than 70 people gathered in Siena College’s Snyder Hall on Thursday for the Greater Capital Region Food System Assessment Stakeholder Forum, the first in a series of forums to be held over the next year.

The Greater Capital Region Food System Assessment is a comprehensive food system assessment aimed at increasing economic resilience and creating a more equitable food system with its results. Spearheaded by local food access nonprofit, Capital Roots, and guided by a steering committee of 20 key players from across the Capital Region’s foodshed, the assessment launched in early 2016 and is projected to wrap up by the end of 2018.

The stakeholder forum brought together key players from the four sectors of the food system — consumption, production, processing, and distribution — to share preliminary findings and workshop current challenges facing members of the foodshed. All four parts of the system are being thoroughly examined as part of the assessment.

Marissa Peck, food assessment coordinator for Capital Roots, shared early findings with stakeholders during the morning session. In the beginning phase of research, Peck and her team conducted a Food Security Focus Group Pilot to identify barriers and opportunities to increasing food security and healthy food access in urban and rural communities in the region.

“We’re finding that there are costs to our upstate farmers that aren’t being factored in to a lot of the conversation about meeting downstate market demand, and we hope to offer another perspective to address that,” Peck said. “In relation to our consumers, we hope to go beyond just understanding the barriers of affordability and availability and dive deeper into the complex challenges facing healthy food access.”

Capital Roots CEO Amy Klein, who is overseeing the project, said the forum was their opportunity to open a dialogue to help guide the next phase of the assessment.

“There is no other research being conducted on this scale in our region,”Klein said, “and, quite frankly, we need this work to happen. We anticipate that the findings will help guide how farmers, nonprofits, funders, businesses, and political leaders will work and collaborate in the coming years.”

After Peck released the early findings, participants broke into groups to discuss challenges such as transportation for urban laborers to rural farms, managing the risks of small producers scaling up to wholesale markets and increasing collaboration in local produce recovery efforts, as well as how best to resolve them.

The next stakeholder forum will take place in November 2018, when assessment committee members will present findings from their second year of research, which will focus on engaging directly with producers, processors and distributors working in the Capital Region.

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