Food Council of Fayette County forms
We wrapped up our annual Buy Local Summit on Friday with a great group of local elected officials, business owners, farmers and community organization members. And what better place to have the summit than a locally owned winery, which incorporates both the small business spirit and agricultural fields.
The Buy Local Summit is a great time to reflect on the program’s successes over the last year, and it serves as a precursor of things and projects to come.
A lot of focus over the next few years will be on a local food initiative for the area. The local economy department at Fay-Penn recently partnered with numerous organizations and others whose passions are local food production and residents’ access to healthier, locally grown foods to form the Food Council of Fayette County, or FC².
The council will focus on creating a sustainable supply of healthy food for Fayette County, from soil to table, from the farm to processing, to the store to the kitchen. The council also plans to work with the local school districts to try and provide more access to locally grown foods in the schools as well as work with local chefs to use locally grown foods in their kitchens. Projects like this not only benefit the consumer, but also the growers and businesses that are a part of the initiative. And, as I have said before, it’s this type of local support that is going to drive the message home of how we can make Fayette County a better place for us and our families.
If you are interested in contributing or being a part of the council, please email me at loris@faypenn.org, or call either myself or Bob Junk at 724-437-7913.
The local economy department also will be working on a big project with the former Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 47 building in downtown Uniontown that will benefit both entrepreneurs and the public. But I’ll save that topic for another day when I have more room to write.
And you may know we have the USCAA basketball tournament coming up in the near future, which also serves as an economic catalyst for our area. Fay-Penn, the Buy Local program and Buy Local businesses will play a large role in that tournament, which will begin the first week in March.
We really would not be able to be involved with as many local projects and events as we are if it weren’t for the support of our Buy Local business members and other community organizations we work with on a regular basis. Our Buy Local business list keeps growing each month, which means we are able to drive more traffic to our local businesses, and we have businesses both in Greene and Westmoreland counties. Visit the website www.buylocalfayette.org for more information on the program.