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 Our Mission & Purpose
The Roaring Fork Food Alliance (RFFA), formerly the Roarng Fork Food Policy Council (RFFPC), began operating formally in January of 2012. It developed out of a growing grassroots coalition of citizens and organizations involved in various capacities of our food system including producers, consumers, educators, and policy makers.
Its goal is to act as a coordinating hub across sectors, engaging with government policy and programs, grassroots/non-profit projects, local businesses, and food workers. Instead of many advocates working on isolated efforts to expand local food capacities, the RFFA provides a platform for coordinated action throughout the Roaring Fork Valley and Colorado River valley, extending from Aspen to Parachute.
The Council will generally have four functions:
- To serve as a public forum for discussing food issues.
- To foster coordination between sectors in the local food system.
- To evaluate and influence policy.
- To launch or support programs and services that address local food needs.
Thoughtful and inclusive coalition building is a key priority for all RFFA efforts. Especially given the diversity of demographics and multi-county patchwork of our region, promoting collaboration across these jurisdictional lines will not only benefit local food policy, but will likely bring greater partnership to other pressing issues facing the region.
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Food Hub Needs Assessment
View the completed Needs Assessment Report »
Please contact Gwen Garcelon with questions or feedback.
The RFFA has undertaken a Needs Assessment process to determine the best model for a regional Food Hub to increase the production of, access to, and consumption of healthy local food. Food hubs are broadly defined as facilities that manage the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution and/or marketing of locally and regionally produced food.
With increasing climate uncertainty impacting our communities, especially in the face of water challenges, it is ever more important for us to create the social and physical infrastructure needed to support a strong local food economy and agricultural system. In order to reach our most vulnerable children, seniors, and other food insecure with healthy food, we will need to rely more and more on local production and recovering healthy food currently being wasted (upwards of 30 - 40% of all food produced!)
The establishment of a food hub in our area can provide brokering services between our local growers and institutions like schools and senior centers to increase access to healthy produce. It can provide collection, processing and distribution services to existing mission-based community efforts like gleaning projects. It can provide leasable food processing and storage facilities that can be shared among organizations with common goals and missions (cooking and food storage education, cottage food start-ups, food co-ops, etc.)
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Get Involved - Donations & Survey!
Local Food Convergence 2016!
Gather with local food system leaders, farmers and supporters on Jan 14, 6-9pm at the Crystal Palace in Aspen. Enjoy farm fresh appetizers from local farms, Colorado spirits, a keynote address from Michael Brownlee of Local Food Shift magazine, and presentation on current efforts to build our local food system. Tickets available at: www.tinyurl.com/jzljo5r
View Event Poster »»
Become a Founding Member!
The RFFA is becoming a formal Local Food Coalition to expand our local food system. Donate now and become a Founding Member - find our what we are working on HERE »
You can help to make sure the Needs Assessment
process is complete by helping us gather the relevant data on local food
efforts in the surveys below. This will ensure that the Food Hub is created
around the goals and input of as many local food stakeholders as possible.
We will email you a link to the Results and Reports page for your review when the survey info has been assimilated into report form.
Please complete any survey(s) of interest below.
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Call for Information. go to survey »
The RFFA Food Hub project is seeking names of food producers, food processors, food-related nonprofits & community projects, and related food businesses and stakeholders in the in the Greater Roaring Fork Valley food system (Aspen to Parachute)… - |
- i.e. food growers, livestock ranches, commercial kitchens, caterers, food product processors, food banks, community and school gardens, restaurants with an emphasis on local foods, community food projects, etc.
These names will be included in our inventory of local food enterprises and invited to participate in our local agriculture needs analysis survey. Thank you!
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Any personal information submitted will only be used in the Needs Assessment process.
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