By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent

AKRON, Ohio — Last week, Ohio Agriculture Director Robert Boggs met with legislators, community leaders and food policy advocates at the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank to celebrate Ohio Agriculture Day, highlighting the cooperative relationship between Ohio’s food producers and distributors.

This year’s celebration, which was held on St. Patrick’s Day, focused on Strickland’s Ohio Neighborhood Harvest initiative, a statewide effort to ensure Ohioans in every neighborhood have access to locally grown food that is healthy and affordable.

The governor’s Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council (OFPAC) laid the groundwork toward establishing a network of resources that will make the connection between agricultural producers and communities that currently do not have access to fresh food.
“This initiative will capitalize on the Ohio Food Policy Advisory Council’s work to help bridge the gap between the state’s agricultural producers and those who do not have access to healthy, nutritious food,” Boggs said. “On this Agriculture Day, we celebrate those farmers and processors who produce food, and let us also give thanks to those places such as the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank.”

The Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank is a distribution center that collects, sorts and distributes food. The food bank secures food donations from corporate food donors, state and federal food assistance programs, local producers and Feeding America, the national food bank network.

The food bank has formed a unique partnership with the Crown Point Ecology Center farm. The farm is located in Bath, Ohio, and is a regional model for sustainable agriculture and environmental education.

Last year the farm donated 20,000 pounds of fresh organic produce, including potatoes, cabbage, beets, tomatoes and squash. This food bank produces emergency food for more than 400 community organizations in Carroll, Holmes, Medina, Portage, Stark, Summit, Tuscarawas and Wayne counties.

While Ohio Agriculture Day is celebrated just once a year, the efforts are ongoing. In upcoming months the OFPAC and the Ohio Department of Agriculture – along with assistance from other state agencies – will move forward with Ohio Neighborhood Harvest to identify statewide areas that lack fresh food. They will analyze information, propose solutions to gaps in the statewide food system and provide tools that local communities can use to improve access to Ohio-grown products.

Ohio Agriculture Day is celebrated each March to help educate Ohioans about the importance of the state’s $98 million food and agriculture industry.