Issue date: 2/6/08 Section: Campus News

Media Credit: Chris Bennett Local farmers and food professionals gathered at Andrews Dining Hall on Tuesday for "speed networking."

Over plates of black bean ravioli and hearty steamed vegetables, around 200 farmers, restaurateurs, food service workers and activists shared stories, strategies and business cards Tuesday in Andrews Dining Hall.
"It's all local," organizer Jenn Baumstein '08 said of the feast. But so were the feasters themselves, all gathered for the fourth annual Local Food Forum.
The event included various discussions and a "speed networking" session and was meant to connect local food producers with local consumers, developing better systems for agricultural cooperation, said Noah Fulmer '05, executive director of Farm Fresh Rhode Island, one of the event's sponsors.
"The state is so small that getting people to know each other can make all the difference," Fulmer said. Many of the participants wouldn't otherwise find the time to communicate and collaborate, so a day off designed for just that can go a long way," he added.
Mostly jean-clad - except for a cadre of chefs from Johnson and Wales University - the participants swapped advice about everything from barrel sizes to product labels. Some recognized a number of friendly faces, while others found themselves surrounded by mostly new acquaintances.
"It builds on itself through friends," Baumstein said of the idea behind the forum. "Half of these people have known each other for 25 years," she said, but a catalyst like yesterday's event helps them solidify a "framework" for those relations to develop in profitable terms.
Among the topics discussed at the forum were distribution strategies for produce, the benefits of cooperation and intercommunication in local agriculture and the importance of knowing where food comes from and ends up.
Farm Fresh RI hopes to address all these issues with a project it is currently developing - a local foods "hub" that would serve as a storage facility, distribution site and community center all at once. The hub would create a "year-round market space," said Sheri Griffin, the organization's development director, that would help to "repair and recreate" an agricultural and consumer climate in Rhode Island that values the local.

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