This quarter, we are highlighting the Northern Colorado Foodshed Project and their role in Climate Smart Future Ready (CSFR). Find out more through the below Q&A with Carli Donoghue, the organization's Executive Director.

What is the Northern Colorado Foodshed Project and your role there?

The Northern Colorado Foodshed Project exists to harness the transformative power of local food, aiming to make our food system more productive, accessible, and secure for all community members. By sparking demand, supporting local production, enhancing infrastructure, and building partnerships, we work to create a vibrant community where producers and consumers thrive. Our efforts are informed by extensive community engagement and data collection, ensuring that we address the needs of our region.

Carli Donoghue is the Executive Director of the Foodshed Project. We recently completed a two year Regional Food Systems planning grant that was a partnership with 5 other local organizations in which we engaged the community through outreach, focus groups and community surveys to better understand the successes and gaps in our food system. We use this data to help inform our upcoming projects within CSFR and to continue to collaborate with other local organizations to serve the needs of a wide range of folks in the community.

Why is the Northern Colorado Foodshed Project involved with CSFR?

We saw CSFR as an opportunity to be more collaborative with other organizations and municipalities. Too often, folks don't get a chance to talk to one another about upcoming projects or troubleshooting, which leads to slow downs and missed opportunities to get comprehensive solutions implemented. Particularly with food systems work, nothing exists in a vacuum; these are complex systems with a ton of factors at play. We hope that this initiative will bring together organizations across fields and missions together and facilitate more collaboration and creativity within our community around climate goals. Climate is a tricky issue and we will need teamwork and troubleshooting together to find compromises and long lasting solutions that benefit the whole community.

What is your entity already successfully working on/achieving and what will be enhanced and added through the CSFR actions?

This is our second year running the "Veg Out" program in partnership with the Food Bank for Larimer County. This program purchases locally grown produce from local producers after the Larimer County Farmers Market that would not have sold on traditional markets and would have gone to waste. This program gets nutrient rich, fresh produce to food bank clients and provides a valuable safety net for local farm businesses.

Last season, the Veg Out program diverted 14,514 pounds of local produce to food bank clientele and paid local producers $84,061. This program increased the resilience of our local food system, directed nutrition-rich foods to Food Bank clients, saved viable food from local landfills, and connected community members across a wide variety of backgrounds and socio-economic statuses. Additionally, our positioning at the weekly farmers market helped to raise awareness both within the food system and the community at large, about the work of the Food Bank, our partnerships with local farmers, and the often-hidden realities of food insecurity in what is usually perceived as an affluent city. Check out this recent 9news article about the Veg Out program.

What action are you and your committee going to tackle first?

We just received a grant from the Colorado Trust to start our Veg Van program. This is very exciting news since it's outcomes closely align with the actions we have in CSFR.

"The Veg Van" is built upon what we have learned through our past 4 years of community assessments and collaborations. It is a partnership driven, access focused venture to provide local producers a low-input market to sell their products, and a resource for providing food access to Larimer county communities. The Veg Van combines a "farmers market on wheels" with streamlined SNAP/WIC/Double Up Food Buck accessibility and no-cost shopping to address food insecurity on the move.

What partners are you planning to work with this year?

CSU and Larimer County Extension, The Food Bank for Larimer County, La Familia, Alianza NORCO, The Vegetable Connection, Poudre Valley Community Farms, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, Blueprint to end Hunger and Nourish Colorado to name a few!

What are your hopes for CSFR work?

To create long lasting partnership and community driven solutions that actually stick. I hope this engagement with the County and the range of local organizations will create more comprehensive solutions and long term-sustainable programs that will become a staple in the community and provide stability and positive impacts all around.