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Paul Brown

Current position: Assistant Director, ISU Extension

Affiliation with VCP: Current member of Value Chain Partnerships Advisory Committee

  • He believes that the Leopold Center has proven that Value Chains and Communities of Practice provide a “tried and true process”
  • He intends to move from a facilitative approach (used for the last 50 years) to a community of practice approach within extension programming.
  • “Using this approach, we will engage extension and clients in a topic of interest and journey with them to produce outcomes which result in change over time”

 

Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld

Current position: Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; member of the ALCES Foundation

Affiliation with VCP: Former member of Regional Food Systems Working Group Advisory Committee

  • While on staff at UNC, he still turns to the RFSWG for support in current projects
  • At UNC, received $18,000 grant that was written using the research conducted by the RFSWG
  • RFSWG has “pioneered collaboration and created common ground” to do “real work, making real progress”

 

JoAnne Berkenkamp

Current position: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Affiliation with VCP: Former Value Chain Partnerships evaluator on behalf of the Wallace Group

  • VCP will “foster transparency in a space that is often competitive”
  • VCP has “honed and debugged the process”
  • “Benefit (of VCP) is bringing a different cast of characters together to create (the) value needed to keep them there in an environment that supports and allows them to grapple with complex supply chains”

 

Sue Futrell

Current position: Owner and consultant, One Backyard Consulting

Affiliation with VCP: Regional Food System Working Group member

  • “(The) benefit of VCP is the mix of people; that combination doesn't typically happen anywhere else and I find it extremely valuable”
  • “Importance of the VCP effort (is) to frame and energize more local food systems in Iowa”
  • The VCP group has “evolved a model that is practice based, not just academic”

 

Duane Short

Current position: Owner, Prime Pork Supply

Affiliation with VCP: Pork Niche Market Working Group member

  • VCP allows for “open communication and a cooperative process”
  • “A competitive group, meeting together to formulate strategies and answers to problems”
  • “Not a typical supply chain but a collaborative one where all work together”

 

Andrea Geary

Current position: Program coordinator, Northern Iowa Food & Farm Partnership

Affiliation with VCP: Northern Iowa Food & Farm Partnership, a subgroup of the Regional Food Systems Working Group

  • "We see our support — or why it's important for us to participate in these groups — as absolutely essential. All of the networking that goes on and the sharing of resources. ... All of the groups that are working to build local food systems are doing so on really limited funding streams and very small pools of resources, so to be able to share those resources, share ideas, share experiences and common knowledge has been invaluable. And plus, it's just fun!"

 

Abbie Gaffey

Current position: Community and economic development field specialist, Iowa State University Extension

Affiliation with VCP: Northwest Iowa Local Foods Group, a subgroup of the Regional Food Systems Working Group

  • "What [Value Chain Partnerships] does at the Leopold Center is bring everybody who's a major player together so we can all meet each other. About quarterly, we have an opportunity to see what everyone else is doing, and these are the resources ... that we need [in order to] to be able to do the work that we're doing out in the field."

 

Teresa Wiemerslage

Current position: Iowa State University Extension; part of the Northeast Iowa Food & Farm Coalition

Affiliation with VCP: Regional Food Systems Working Group

  • "The networking and the connections that are available to us through [the Regional Food Systems Working Group] is invaluable. The old saying 'it's priceless' [applies because of] the amount of interaction and learning that occurs when you get groups of people together. The most recent example in my mind is even between working groups now."
  • "Traditionally, the NIFF Coalition has been part of the RFSWG group; recently, we've been working very closely with the Fruit and Vegetable Growing Working Group as we start to craft a plan for food safety and how we need to educate producers around safe food production and what they can do to demonstrate and identify to their buyers what kind of products they have and that they do know how to grow it safely and have top-quality access to those markets. Recent conversations we've had lately wouldn't have happened without the connections we've had through these working groups to be able to bring together folks from the Fruit & Vegetable Growers and from Extension and from College of Horticulture and Crop Development Association — those were people I didn't know three months ago, so those relationships have really catapulted our work."

 

Detra Dettmann

Current position: Local foods coordinator

Affiliation with VCP: Hometown Harvest of Southeast Iowa, a subgroup of the Regional Food Systems Working Group

  • Dettmann said it important for Hometown Harvest to be a part of Regional Food Systems Working Group because of "three words: link, leverage, and learn. The Regional Food Systems Working Group has allowed us to link to other local food efforts in the state. At the quarterly meetings we've got access to information and real on-the-ground work that's happening in the local food arena. We've also been able to leverage some of our resources by working with some of the local groups in the region and also across the state on joint projects and across the state. And then lastly and probably most importantly, our involvement allows us to learn with these other groups in Iowa in their experiences. Through the quarterly meetings we learn from other experts who are brought in from out of state that share their work and resources, and we also learn from the continually expanding library of research and resources that are made available through the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. I would say, at Hometown Harvest we've been working in the local food arena since 2005, and I know that we absolutely would not be where we are today in southeast Iowa if we hadn't been involved in the Regional Food Systems Working Group; it's made a huge difference."

 

Bahia Barry

Current position: Local food coordinator, Golden Hills RC&D

Affiliation with VCP: Southwest Iowa Food & Farm Initiative, a subgroup of the Regional Food Systems Working Group

  • Thanks to the Value Chain Partnerships project, Bahia says the Southwest Iowa Food & Farm Initiative "can network and collaborate on a broader scale than would be possible if we were working in an isolated environment."

  • She believes that "statewide collaboration ... through the Regional Food Systems Working Group ... helps eliminate redundancies within the local communities across the state."

 

Norm McCoy

Current position: Entrepreneurial and diversified agriculture  program coordinator, Marshalltown Community College

Affiliation with VCP: Harvest from the Heart (COMIDA), a subgroup of the Regional Food Systems Working Group

  • "COMIDA was formed ... to help organize students at the Marshalltown Community College into a marketing-and-producing entity. ... If we didn't have the Regional Food Systems Working Group, we wouldn't have gotten started. ... They would have been supplying us with money and personnel that we would have access to, and there is just no way we would have gotten started without it."

 

Brenda Ranum

Current position: Regional extension director, Iowa State University Extension

Affiliation with VCP: Northeast Iowa Food & Farm Coalition, Regional Food Systems Working Group

  • "Without the Regional Food Systems Working Group, I don't think we would have moved very far. But we have engaged producers and linked with people across the state to start impacting policies. I could give you so many examples of when we've had an issue in northeast Iowa and we thought, 'Is this just our issue?' When we came to the Regional Food Systems Working Group [meetings, we realized] these were issues that were affecting the whole state. And sometimes, it's been nationwide. Again, ... when you share those stories, they start to say, 'Hey, I think I can help you with this,' or 'This is impacting us too; let's work together.' And that's been invaluable to our work, and it's been a great thing."

 

Angie Tagtow

Current position: Environmental nutrition consultant, Food and Society Policy Fellow 

Affiliation with VCP: Food Access and Health Working Group

  • "I really see a fascinating reciprocal relationship between the Food Access and Health Working Group and the Regional Food Systems Working Group in the fact that food and assistance programs really provide a significant role in communities in assuring that low-resource families don't fall through the gaps. And one of the things that I think Iowa needs to think about and look at is the amount of food and assistance program dollars that actually come into Iowa ... and how that money can really be leveraged in supporting the Regional Food System Work and the local food-system initiatives."

  • Angie said that she sees "a really healthy relationship growing over time with the Fruit and Vegetable Working Group. By collaborating with the Fruit and Vegetable Working Group, hopefully we can come up with some innovative ideas as to how our local food systems can better interact with our food and nutrition assistance programs and how our producers can be even more engaged with providing fresh, healthful foods on the plates of low-resource families."