Michigan is embracing the budding Good Food movement: In the southwest, east-central, and northwestern corners of the Lower Peninsula, growers, businesses, and community leaders are building a local food economy that increases quality of life, boosts farm prosperity, slows sprawl, and improves health. As the state struggles to re-invent itself for the 21st century's New Economy, Patty Cantrell, founder of the Michigan Land Use Institute's Entrepreneurial Agriculture program, reports on the plans and progress that these regions are making in building stronger communities with healthy, local food.
MSU Extension Grows a Stronger Kalamazoo
Friday, July 09, 2010 MSU Extension Grows a Stronger Kalamazoo
Kalamazoo County Extension helps gardeners, growers, businesses, and officials bring healthier food and stronger farms to the region.
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Tuesday, December 01, 2009 Kalamazoo: Oh, the Webs They Weave!
The rise of Kalamazoo’s strong Good Food movement is all about people—and about how one good thing often leads to another when those people are passionately committed to a local food economy—and communicating with each other. For many, the town’s Good Food movement revolves around a non-profit called Fair Food Matters.
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Kalamazoo: Hospital Digs into Local Food
Thursday, November 19, 2009 Kalamazoo: Hospital Digs into Local Food
The thing to know about Michael Rowe, food service director for Bronson Methodist Hospital, is that, in just two years, he’s taken the facility from zero locally produced food in patient and cafeteria meals to almost 12 percent. And he’s just getting started; by the end of this year, he hopes to bump that number up to 25 percent. And he has no plan to stop there, either.
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Kalamazoo: Getting Ready for Good Food
Monday, November 09, 2009 Kalamazoo: Getting Ready for Good Food
Often, big changes start with big ideas from “little people,” even when it’s something as big as the Dot-Com Era, which involved just a few geeky entrepreneurs experimenting with circuit boards. Today, thanks to a remarkably diverse group of “little people”, a big change is occurring in Kalamazoo, and it’s all about food.
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Benton Harbor: Colleges Stock Up, Save on Local Foods
Monday, August 31, 2009 Benton Harbor: Colleges Stock Up, Save on Local Foods
Some things just add up. Moves by two colleges in southwest Lower Michigan to preserve fresh local produce in the summer for winter meals have proved to be powerful employee-retention strategies as well as ways to boost the local economy and serve tastier food in their cafeterias.
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Benton Harbor: Pulling Together Food and Farm Leaders
Friday, August 21, 2009 Benton Harbor: Pulling Together Food and Farm Leaders
The group of people that sat down together this spring at Benton Harbor City Hall was small but powerful. Representing farmers, economic developers, local government, and local businesses, they talked about food: How Berrien County can benefit much more from tasty, healthy, trustworthy food that so many local farms produce. It was the beginning of the Benton Harbor Food Council.
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All Aboard the SW Mich. Good Food Tour!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 All Aboard the SW Mich. Good Food Tour!
The community garden on the northeast side of Grand Rapids is serene. Clear air and eager sunlight set the young lettuce leaves and turned-up dirt aglow as gardeners bend to their work. It’s like a postcard of the Tuscan countryside. Then I spy the tag in the ground next to some plants, and it speaks volumes.
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