Internship Update and Homegrown Minneapolis

Last Wednesday marked the midpoint of this UMN-TEP dietetic internship. I have passed the eight-week eating disorders rotation, visited half of the community sites, dabbled in school foodservice, and made it through four weeks of foodservice in a long-term care facility.

And now, right before a two-week vacation, I'm enjoying my Independent Study week. Besides sitting in on an intensive outpatient program at The Emily Program, I am taking advantage some local food events.

Homegrown Minneapolis is an initiative started in December 2008 geared toward strengthening the city's local food system. They've knocked off some impressive items off their to-do list, the most exciting of which to me are:

• Completed a community kitchen inventory of more than 50 commercial and noncommercial kitchens
• Established a food council beginning this January
• Made it possible to use Electronic Benefits Transfer at farmers markets, aka "circulating federal food support into the local economy"

Cleaning out my in-box, I found an email about the initiative's community meeting from Healthy Food, Healthy Lives listserv. Hey, that's tonight! I thought. It was a sign - that and the fact that I heard it mentioned on MPR on my way over.

After a program introduced by Mayor R.T. Rybak that outlined the efforts and successes of Homegrown, we settled in for hosted table conversations. Our hosts for the evening wanted to know what we thought was the most significant progress made thus far and what should be the focus of the food council as it moved forward.   

Homegrown Minneapolis

Our table agreed that connecting the dots between growers, processors, distributors, eaters, and composters signified the greatest progress. And in my opinion, the future focus should be on increasing food availability and access, which is to say, eliminating food deserts.

Also, they should get a facebook page, or something with their logo on it.