The Finland Food Chain Project 2019

Hopefully you’ve already heard about it, but 2019 marks the launch of the Finland Food Chain project, a 3 year project funded by Bush Foundation Community Innovation funds, with a mission to create an equitable and interrelated local food system that increases access to healthy foods and builds local wealth in Finland Minnesota and the surrounding area. So far we have had two large community meetings to gather input for projects, and a lot of behind-the-scenes work to get things organized and up and running. Many great ideas for projects to build our local food system are in the works and will get off the ground in the near future.

Many of these first-phase projects involve information gathering as a first step. The Food Chain recently conducted a community-wide survey to gather information on local folks food buying habits, needs and wants.

Projects so far include work on a feasibility study for local wild rice processing, creation of a directory of local food producers, research into a community garden, a planned assessment of local institutional purchasing, classes on farming and gardening, enhancing the Finland Farmers Market, grantwriting to help the Finland Co-op update infrastructure, creating a local seed savers group, and much more.

We are currently in the process of hiring coordinators to work on Infrastructure, Purchasing, Producers and Education for the project.

The Finland Food Chain welcomes participation and input for this ongoing work. There will be many opportunities to participate in the future. For more info, please visit: www.finlandfoodchain.org or www.facebook.com/finlandfoodchain and/or contact Project Coordinator Honor Schauland at 218-353-0300.