Local Foods, Local Places

Local Foods, Local Places

Local Foods, Local Places (LFLP) is a federal initiative administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), helping communities reinvest in their neighborhoods, improving quality of life as they develop their local food and health economies. Through LFLP, a team of federal agricultural, environmental, public health, and regional economic development experts worked directly with Seven Valleys Health Coalition, the City of Cortland, and other community leaders to develop a local foods action plan.

Since its national launch in 2014, LFLP has helped 78 communities across the country develop local food enterprises, such as farmers' markets, community gardens, and cooperative grocery stores, that improve environmental, economic, and health outcomes. Only 16 "Local Foods, Local Places" communities were chosen from more than 75 applicants in 2018 with Cortland being the only awardee in New York State. Since 2018, the Cortland Food Project (CFP) committee has continued to work enthusiastically towards fulfilling many items within the action plan.

Hunger, agritourism, connecting farmers with food pantries, farm-to-school programs, a year-round, indoor farmers' market and commercial kitchen, increased urban agriculture, and use of SNAP and WIC benefits to purchase healthy local foods are some of the priorities the Cortland Food Project discussed at the EPA sponsored "Local Foods, Local Places" planning sessions that took place July 30-31st, 2018. A full editorial of the process including the complete action plan is available for download. A limited supply of bound hard copies of the report and plan are available by contacting Seven Valleys Health Coalition.

The CFP remains excited to see what initiatives the LFLP action plan generates to improve access to healthy, local foods here in Cortland while supporting local foods economic development. So far LFLP has seeded:

December 2018: Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cortland County, in collaboration with the CFP, was awarded a NYS Ag & Markets Farm-to-School planning grant (LFLP Goal 4).

March 2019: SVHC restarted the Hunger Coalition as a CFP subcommittee (LFLP Goal 2)
March 2019 – November 2019: SVHC, on behalf of the CFP, received a technical assistance award through HealtheConnections’ Population Health Improvement Program, providing the CFP with individual consultation with the Food Communities and Public Health Director from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future to assist CFP with the goal of transitioning into a food policy council (LFLP Goals 2, 3 & 4)
May 2019: The City of Cortland and SVHC, in collaboration with the CFP and Hunger Coalition subcommittee, were awarded a NYSDEC Municipal Food Scraps Reduction, Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling program grant (LFLP Goal 2).