Month: March 2017

Media Release

TLD Hires Four New Staff Members

Press Release, Tricia Phelps

For Immediate Release

Date:               March 6, 2017

Contact:          Tricia Phelps, tricia@localdifference.org  (877)373-5940

Download a PDF Version of this Media Release here.

Taste the Local Difference® Hires New Local Food Staff Covering Michigan

TRAVERSE CITY – Taste the Local Difference®, Michigan’s local-food marketing agency, has hired four new staff members representing communities around the state.

In fulfilling its mission to help sell more locally grown and produced food in Michigan, TLD has added three local food coordinators in Northeast Michigan, Southeast Michigan, and the Upper Peninsula.

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Part Three: Making A Choice for Our Community

Brian Bates, Economy, Farmers Markets, Food Policy, Guest Post, Stories

This is Part Three of a three-part series from farmer Brian Bates of Bear Creek Organic Farm in Petoskey, Michigan. This essay was delivered as part of his keynote address to attendees at the Northwest Michigan Food and Farming Network’s annual Farm Route to Prosperity Summit on February 17th of this year.

In parts one and two of the essay, Bates first describes his journey On Becoming A Farmer and then begins to demonstrate the lessons of Scale and Perspective learned from hands-on experience working at large farms in the US and elsewhere.

 

Part Three: Making a Choice for Our Community

BatesSlide20I think prosperity is defined by a community’s well-being. At Bear Creek, we are invested in our community and hopefully our community in us. We won’t relocate our factory tomorrow, and in the meantime, we shop locally, bank locally, ensure locally, employ locally. We teach others how to grow, and we welcome strangers to our farm.

We celebrate the deliciousness of our food, and we respond precisely to the needs of our community.

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Introducing the Farm to Resource Directory

Get Involved, Learn More, Sharron May

The rising demand for local food has presented new opportunities and challenges for an industry that has largely been export-based for the past 50 years. So when local producers in the region determined that better access to expertise, training, business development and capitalization would help them meet this growing demand, TLD listened.

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Love of Local Food Leads to Tasty Partnerships

Event, Find Local Food, Guest Post, Sarah Peschel, Stories

Nearly 15 years ago Epicure Catering was born of a desire to showcase the best artisanal products our region has to offer. In a rented commercial kitchen, we gathered our cook friends and set to work creating menus highlighting producers and embodying the “farm to table” movement; a concept and practice that was just beginning to emerge in our area at the time. Our foundation was a duty to source from and support our local economy, and it remains the same today.  

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Part Two: Scale and Perspective

Brian Bates, Economy, Farmers Markets, Food Policy, Guest Post, Stories

Editor’s Note:

This is Part Two of a three-part series from farmer Brian Bates of Bear Creek Organic Farm in Petoskey, Michigan. This essay was delivered as part of his keynote address to attendees at the Northwest Michigan Food and Farming Network’s annual Farm Route to Prosperity Summit on February 17th of this year. 

In Part One: On Becoming A Farmer, Bates describes some of the influences in his life that led him to become an organic farmer.  In this Part Two, he details an eye-opening journey that took him to a variety of farms around the world, learning what he could about the differences that scale makes in farming practices. And that, all in all, the farmers he worked with are not that different than him!

 

Part Two: Scale and Perspective

BatesSlide05
We used to drive to the beach every year on the 4th of July and pass through the vast cornfields of Delaware. You may not have expected me to say Delaware, being that we’re in the Midwest, but at a certain scale, we become numb to the scale regardless of size – more on that later.

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Growing Local Food through Growing New Farmers

Find Local Food, Get Involved, Learn More, Melissa Orzechowski, Stories

Landen Tetil became the first farmer apprentice at Michigan State University’s North Farm in Chatham three years ago. The program aims to increase local food production in the Upper Peninsula and each year farmer apprentices begin in mid-March.

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