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2006 Annual Member Meeting & 2nd Meeting of the Farm & Food Network

(January 17, 2007 - Minutes) The annual meeting and new board of directors election of the Regional Farm & Food Project was held on January 17, 2007, at the second meeting of the Farm & Food Network (an RFFP initiative), at Brown's Brewery, Troy, NY. Thirty people were in attendance. Jim Manning, Chair of the RFFP board gave a State of the Organization Report and the Treasurer's Report (for details refer to published 2006 Annual Report), with comments from Billie Best. Eileen Stone, outgoing RFFP board member, introduced the slate of new board members up for election. Two additional people, Bill Higgins, of Saratoga Garlic, and longtime activist, David Yarrow, were nominated from the floor. The slate of new board members was elected unanimously. The RFFP board of directors is: Cheryl Nechamen, Anna Dawson, Paula McConnell, Louise Johnson, Bill Higgins, David Yarrow, Billie Best, Liz Lukowski and Jim Manning. Outgoing board members are Claudia Kenny, Eileen Stone and Richard Green.

Farm & Food Network news announced at the meeting:

• Honest Weight Food Coop is planning an April 14th event in conjunction with the nationwide event being organized by Bill McKibben. Also, Honest Weight will hold its annual Earth Day festivities in April.
• Lorre Smith of U Albany is looking for speakers who want to present to students on the topic of sustainability.
• Liz Pohlman (Public Health Pod) is now working for the NYS Dept of Health and talked about available USDA grant funds.
• Jim Manning announced that he was setting up a Farm & Food Network listserv via Yahoo! Groups. Pod leaders were invited to set up their own mini-listservs for their pod.
• Louise Johnson (Peak Oil Pod) is ready to roll-out DVD and media packets for people interested in hosting showings of "An Inconvenient Truth." Packets include postcards and info kits on sustainability and energy conservation. This info will also be made available on the RFFP website.
• Anna Dawson of Hometown Foods, and Jim Hyland of Wintersun Farms both talked about the availability of fresh, frozen local foods. Anna is doing R&D, recipe development and PR. Jim is trying to wholesale larger quantities to institutions.
• Cheryl Nechamen (100 Mile Diet Pod) is collaborating to present a new "spring challenge" to have people commit to the "100-foot Diet" and see how much of their food they can produce in their own garden. They are also starting to think about what they can do in the area of farm-to-institution.
• Mary Alice Smith announced the release of a local cookbook from Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace. Also a Regional Energy Summit on Feb 5th at 5:30pm at Professor Java's on Wolf Road.
• Sandy Gordon (Farm Survival Pod) announced the news that the National Animal Identification System may be dead according to recent USDA announcements.
• Nate Darrow of Saratoga Apple introduced the idea of doing a farmer exchange program with Jamaica. Many of the workers in his orchard are Jamaican.
• Mark Weinheimer spoke of his work on the Regional Foodbank Farm.
• Judith Kleinberg of the New England Pastured Poulty Association announced that they have the only public hatchery in NYS and they want to build their business. They also have an under-utilized mobile processing unit for processing poultry on-farm which is available to NYS farmers.
• Dan Gibson of Home Energy Advisors talked about the "low carbon diet."

The date for the next Farm & Food Network meeting will be announced in February.