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Thank you to all who have supported Wood River Valley HarvestFest and to the many people - from food producers and chefs to volunteers and sponsors - who have helped make it a success! Since the inaugural event in 2015, HarvestFest has exposed nearly a thousand residents and visitors to delicious locally grown foods and brought us together to celebrate our incredible local farmers and chefs.
When HarvestFest started, we partnered with Idaho’s Bounty to serve as our distributor of local food. In recent years, Idaho’s Bounty was unable to serve this need and procurement fell upon the HarvestFest team. As many chefs and farmers know, sorting out the logistics of local food is no small feat.
We continue to seek ways to plan a successful event that supports our community farmers, and inspires chefs, individuals and families to buy more local food throughout the year. The mission and potential impact of HarvestFest are substantial, but depend upon broad-scale changes to our food system. Local Food Alliance and other community-based organizations, businesses and farmers are working hard to develop solutions so that HarvestFest, other local events, and local restaurants and stores can more readily source food from local farms.
For 2019, we have decided to focus our team and resources upon strengthening collaboration among community food stakeholders, assessing infrastructure and business development opportunities, and better understanding the supply and demand of our foodshed. HarvestFest 2020 will be redesigned with the same mission: educate, connect and collaborate with individuals, organizations, and businesses to bring locally and regionally grown food to our community.
We would appreciate any feedback regarding this event and our greater food system work. We welcome your input on potential dates, venues and logistics. What do you love about HarvestFest? How can we improve? Please send feedback and ideas to stacy@sunvalleyinstitute.org or amy@sunvalleyinstitute.org.
To learn more about our work and to subscribe to our monthly newsletter, please visit localfoodalliance.org
We look forward to celebrating the harvest with you throughout the year and get ready for an even better HarvestFest in 2020!
Sincerely,
LFA & the HarvestFest team
