LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With the desire for locally grown food increasing, Kentucky consumers have a new tool to help find those foods by way of a new web page, which provides links to all the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture’s programs and initiatives related to local foods.

College of Agriculture Dean Scott Smith and Kentucky First Lady Jane Beshear announced the creation of the site during the recent American School Health Assoc. meeting.

“The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to the dinner table. By purchasing locally grown food products, we can fuel our regional economies and decrease our carbon footprint while also improving the nutritional value of our diets,” said Beshear. “This web page will be an exceptional resource to connect Kentuckians to easily accessible and locally grown food.”

The first lady has touted the goodness of locally grown, healthy food through many initiatives including the Governor’s Gardens project, a series of gardens planted across the state, that help feed the needy.

Knowing the resources UK already processed and available online, she, along with the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy (GOAP) came to experts at UK with the idea of using those resources in a statewide one-stop online location. The result was the Kentucky and Local Food Resources web page.

“We were delighted to join First Lady Jane Beshear, the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy and others in this effort,” Smith said. “We expect this will enhance community access to healthy, fresh food while also increasing economic opportunities for Kentucky farmers.”

Roger Thomas, GOAP executive director praised the work of Beshear and UK in their efforts to make this project a reality.

“We value the UK College of Agriculture’s leadership on the first lady’s initiative, and we look forward to continuing the coordinated effort to educate consumers on the availability of local food resources,” he said. “An array of local food resources is available across the state, but this site gives us one centralized location to direct consumers.”

Janet Mullins, UK associate extension professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science was instrumental in the development of the site. She said the university had a large amount of information available; it was just a matter of organizing it. She also said she thinks the site will be helpful to many sectors.

“I think it will be very useful, I hope particularly for people who are entrepreneurs and who are interested in learning more about their part to strengthen the local food system,” Mullins said.

“I think it will be helpful to schools because many are looking for resources for their Farm to School programs and by resources I mean producers who can produce enough quantities to feed all the kids in Jefferson County (Kentucky’s largest school district) or maybe a tri-county area in Northern Ky. Those are the kind of connections I hope that page will help make.”

According to information from UK, as part of the project, Cooperative Extension agents will have the opportunity to develop county web pages that list their local producers and products. Franklin and Woodford counties will have the first county-specific web pages developed.

Mullins said that while that portion of the web page is still in the development stage, the state and natural resources are available for use, now. She added that once those county pages are created, they will include localized information from local community organizations, as well.

Mullins emphasized that the site will serve as a way for those local communities to learn from each other by seeing what others are doing which can make life better, especially in rural parts of the state.

“Rural areas are struggling, now and you know, in Kentucky, we value this place we call home. We want to preserve those areas and want the quality of life to be very good there and there’s no reason why building local food economies can’t make that happen,” she said.

The timing for that to happen couldn’t be better, Mullins noted. In her 30-year career of working with food she has never seen a better chance to reform the local food system.

“What we can do is take advantage of this moment in time when people want to know that their food is safe and appreciate knowing who grew it,” Mullins said.

The web page is available on the UK College of Agriculture website at www2.ca.uky.edu/foods. For other information about local foods in the state, go to www.kyproud.com