PRESS :: Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Marisol Asselta, Central Coast Coordinator

(831) 761-8507, marisol@caff.org

The Next Step for Buy Fresh, Buy Local: ¡Compre lo Fresco de Nuestra Región!

WATSONVILLE (September 30, 2006)

The California Central Coast “Buy Fresh Buy Local” (BFBL) campaign, after three years of increasing success in its mission to connect local family farmers with community retail outlets and customers, is now expanding the campaign to include the region’s dynamic and growing Spanish-speaking community. 

The “Compre lo Fresco de Nuestra Región” (CFNR) campaign is a joint project which combines CAFF and ALBA’s local programs

with their national partner Food Route’s infrastructural support. CFNR will be a pilot program in Watsonville and Salinas, and then will be offered as a resource to partner BFBL organizations throughout the United States. To this end, CAFF and ALBA are working to provide language translations that would be relevant to a wide and diverse Spanish-speaking audience.

ALBA (Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association) is an organization that works primarily with limited-resource Latino farm workers who are in the process of becoming organic small farmers. Several of their members have been involved in the creation of CFNR and six of their farmers were the first to use the Spanish language materials, with great success, in the new Oldtown Salinas Farmers’ Market.

The CFNR campaign has three main goals:

To provide marketing and retail resources to local Latino and limited-resource farmers;

To increase public awareness of the health, quality, and local economic and social benefits of purchasing food from members of their own community;

To facilitate the creation of a local “affordable access” infrastructure.

There are several strong sources of motivation in this campaign, but two particularly timely ones are 1) health and fitness concerns and 2) the need for a strong and stable local economy with corresponding employment opportunities. Many of the Spanish-speaking residents in the Central Coast are employed in the agricultural field, yet very often have little to no access to the fresh, healthy food they help to produce. The obesity and Type 2 diabetes epidemic is hitting the Latino community hard, with many children struggling with weight-related health issues at increasingly younger ages, even down to the toddler years.  In addition, many farm workers are subject to seasonal availability of jobs, with little to no assurance that they will be able to find dependable, year-round employment.

Local family farmers tend to offer increased stability, preferring to keep on good workers that are familiar with the operations of their farm. Providing a consistent market and support structure for them will hopefully translate into a greater number of opportunities for stable, sustainable employment in the farm working community.  Smaller, local farmers are also able to interact more directly with their customers and employees, and are therefore presumed to be more likely to respond to their community’s needs and concerns regarding worker treatment and responsible farming practices.

CFNR will be making use of the same campaign offerings as BFBL:

Graphics and point-of purchase material templates, which are displayed with produce, highlighting  farm’s name, locality, and/or farming methods used, are provided for both farmers and retailers.

There will be a printed annual Local Food Guide listing Central Coast farms, markets, restaurants, and other members of the CFNR/BFBL programs and access to graphics and fundraising materials such as tote bags, caps, stickers, banners, etc. designating them as CFNR participants and listing in them in CAFF’s online Local Food Guide. 

There will also be the opportunity to join ventures such as The Growers’ Collaborative, which opens up institutional markets to smaller farms by combining their produce and delivering it en masse to the buyer.

In addition, a variety of educational workshops, public outreach events, and member gatherings will be integral parts of the campaign, as they are with our current program.

The County of Santa Cruz and the City of Santa Cruz both voted in 2005 to make September “Local Food Month”. On Tuesday, September 12, 2006, the City of Watsonville’s mayor Antonio Rivas issued an official proclamation of the same. The first official kick-off of this bilingual celebration will be at 8:30am on Friday, September 22, 2006 with the raising of a 24-foot banner over Main Street in downtown Watsonville.

The design is in the style of Pajaro Valley’s old-time food crate labels.  It is emblazoned with the BFBL logo and the words “Celebrate Locally Grown Food and Support Our Farming Community!” on one side, and the CFNR logo and “Celebre lo que Cultivamos Aquí y Apoye a Nuestra Comunidad!” on the other.

This banner will be the harbinger of a timely and exciting expansion in CAFF’s continuing mission to serve beleaguered, yet crucial, facets of the Nation’s food systems network!

#