Seeds of Change

Heifer Launches Seeds of Change

by Lisa Armstrong

Growing vegetables in the ground takes time, effort and dedication. Yet energy focused on a single point, like the sun on a plant, can yield marvelous results.

In recent times, a movement is growing to help bring about a new direction for locally grown food and its distribution in our country.

Heifer USA’s newest initiative, The Seeds of Change, launched in July, 2011, is an “outcomes driven, competitive grants program” that holds as its ultimate goal changing the way food is distributed in the United States, said US Programs Director Perry Jones. “We are poised to do some revolutionary things,” he said. Heifer’s stateside programs have been been refocused on providing locally-grown, affordable produce, coupled with better and more sustainable food production. The program will also assist small and medium-sized farmers toward those goals, he said.

“I see local food as a major weapon against hunger and poverty,” Jones said. With 1 out of 5 children in the U.S. being food insecure,  or that a child is hungry because of a lack of resources, this statement holds profound consequences for a more positive future. Food-based enterprises with a point of distribution in a centralized location can help bring local produce to those in need in Arkansas’s Delta area, as well as the Appalachian region of North Carolina and Tennessee.

But in order to distribute locally grown foods more effectively, new infrastructure supports will be needed.  So, Heifer is wants to partner with government, the health care industry, local banks, grocery retailers, and others.

In March, 2011, nationally known food system analyst Ken Meter spoke at the Heifer International headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, about projects in Wisconsin and other locales that Heifer hopes to emulate toward a more sustainable local food system. The goal is to provide healthy, (and mostly organic) produce, meat and dairy products to needy people within a 50-mile radius of a distribution center, as well as  to create new and sustainable jobs, Jones said.

La Farge, Wisconsin’s Organic Valley dairy cooperative has just such a center. The initiative offers local restaurants, schools, hospitals and other institutions milk and cheese, from a rural setting.  It started in 2003, when seven dairy farmers in the town formed a cooperative toward what is now the “number one source of organic milk in the nation”, according to the groups’ website. 

Heifer will award grants of up to $125,000 to qualifying communities in Eastern Arkansas. Participants must represent a diversity of interests, including farming or environmental organizations, economic development corporations, public health departments, faith-based organizations, chambers of commerce, and other organizations.

Helping poor, undernourished families to become more self-reliant has been Heifer International’s mission for more than a half century. The organization stemmed from farmer Dan West’s relief efforts  in the early 1940s during the Spanish Civil War. While providing milk to hungry people, West realized that families needed help outside of handouts, so he started donating heifers (female cows) to help families to feed themselves.  Those farmers turned around and helped others by giving calves from their cow to another family in need.

Now, in the United States, the concept of passing both technical information and financial assistance on has grown to include teaching farmers and community leaders about working together. New cooperatives will build community and to grow their own food to help their own families, as well as others who are needy in the Delta and Appalachian regions of the United States.

If you or someone you know is interested in a partnership with Heifer toward their Seeds of Change program, please contact us at info-usa@list.heifer.org.