By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

DUBLIN, Ohio — The Ohio Farmers Union (OFU) was responsible for the creation of the Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council, state Agriculture (ODA) Director Robert Boggs said when speaking at the OFU annual convention.

“It was your idea – the momentum your organization brought to bear – that really caused the governor to issue the executive order creating the Food Policy Advisory Council, and a year into it I have some things to share,” he said.

The executive order detailed environmental, social and economic benefits that Ohio’s food and farming system contributes to the state, as well as the importance of retaining and growing that industry to further expand those benefits. Also of critical importance was helping Ohioans who do not have access to healthy and fresh foods.

The council is a group of individuals representing all aspects of food production, food processing, health and nutrition, and “they’re meeting every month to bring some sanity and understanding to our food policies,” Boggs said.

Problems with health care and food begin with the fact that people in charge of food know little about health while the people in charge of health care understand little about food, he said.

“This leads to such disastrous consequences as the food industry churning out food in great quantities that are high in fat and sugars, while at the same our medical system is overburdened by obesity and people who have diabetes and other heart problems,” Boggs said.

When Gov. Ted Strickland outlined the executive order for the food council, he pointed out that food is essential to economy as well as to nutrition, and Ohioans have to find better ways of making more employment take place in agriculture.

That’s especially true for small and mid-sized farmers, Boggs said.
One problem the council is finding is that Ohio has a lack of processing, especially for the smaller and mid-sized producers. Farmers are taking swine to Philadelphia and Chicago to be processed. ODA is looking into mobile meat processing units in Ohio, as Vermont and the state of Washington have done.
“Put them on wheels and move them where they need to be for some of the smaller producers,” Boggs said. “We have a feeling with chicken, and even with lamb and goats, we can get some of that activity underway this year.”

Another area with tremendous opportunity for Ohio is aquaculture. Seafood and fish are the greatest source of the trade deficit of any agricultural product, Boggs said.

“Each year we bring into this country $7.5 billion dollars of seafood and fish more than what we send overseas,” he said.

“Unfortunately, because there is a vacuum and there is not enough production of seafood and fish in the United States.”

The council is also concerned about food insecurity in Ohio. Twelve percent of all families in the state go hungry at some time in the year.

“This is at a time when we’re throwing food away from some of our stores after the expiration dates take place,” Boggs said. “There’s got to be a better way of handling food insecurity.”

Finally, even though farmland preservation efforts in the past five years have saved 30,000 acres of private farmland, many times that amount has been lost to development.

The program now in existence is tailored more for cropland and row crops; it does little for the small farms in metropolitan areas that grow vegetable and fruits that are necessary for the local food supply in those regions, Boggs said.

His department is working on an alternate program that uses federal money for the specialty-crop part of the farm bill to be used to protect five- and 10-acre vegetable and fruit farms that are so necessary for good nutrition in metropolitan areas.

The department will have its hands full in 2009; however, Boggs said he sees much opportunity with the new federal administration.