Columbus Foundation Match Day Results

Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association 26 April 2009 Director’s Report

Communications and Public Relations

Newsletters The 2nd newsletter of the year should have hit your mailboxes before our meeting.

Website An ongoing problem with logins for users of the Good Earth Guide and Apprentice Program has been resolved. The Good Earth Guide has been enhanced with a location feature so that sellers can list where their products are available (i.e., restaurants, farmers markets, stores, etc.)

We are also making plans to begin to publish our “Portraits of Success” on the website. These are based on the farmer profiles that OSU grad student Dani Deemer undertook for us last summer. We expect to roll out one new profile a month over the next year.

Other Next big publication projects include the summer farm tour brochure and the Good Earth Guide. Our plan is to have both of these out before attention turns back to the Newsletter.

Status of Grants

North Central Risk Management Education Center I was invited to submit a full proposal for a project titled Assessing and Managing Risk in Organic Production and Marketing. The proposal is informed by several of our long-term planning goals, in particular to provide farmers with business management and development assistance and to help growers better understand their costs. In short, it would complement our existing Growing Organics Program, by focusing on the business aspects of organics rather than production. I submitted the full proposal on February 26th and we should know by the time of the Board meeting if we were successful. The funding request is $48,285. The project would run for 18 months, beginning July 1, 2009. The proposal was developed in close consultation with Jackie LeBerth, who has experience providing business training for farmers through the Tilling the Soil of Opportunity curriculum, and who will take a lead role in delivering the proposed program for us, if we are funded.

Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Development Program (BFRDP) I mentioned at our January meeting that a coalition was forming to provide services to Ohio’s beginning farmers and also to collectively prepare ourselves to respond to a much-anticipated call for proposals for the BFRDP (a Farm Bill Program). That collective has continued to formalize, with Sharon Sachs taking the lead facilitator role, and consists of 9 groups, including:

Two governmental entities (USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) represented by Bob Hendershot and Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA), Sustainable Agriculture represented by Amalie Lipstreu), several from Higher Education (OSU’s Agroecosystems Management Program (AMP) represented by Casey Hoy, and the Organic Food and Farming Education & Research Program (OFFER) represented by Deborah Stinner, as well as Ohio State University Extension (OSU-E) represented by Mike Hogan from Carroll County (co-Director of Extension’s Sustainable Ag Team); Statewide non-profits include (OEFFA) represented by Carol Goland, and Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF) represented by Darryl Rubel Finally, several regional non- profits are Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy (CVCC) represented by Darwin Kelsey , and Small Farm Institute (SFI) represented by Leah Miller.

The call for proposals for the BFRDP recently went out and proposals are due on May 13th. I will know more about the direction of that proposal at our Board meeting, and am following the Board’s January directive that you would like OEFFA to take a leadership role in this work. I think that we have a lot of contribute to this project by virtue of our ongoing educational programs, but also see ways we may be able to use this to expand our programs and address some of the goals identified in our long-term planning process.

Development & Outreach

Workplace As always, I want to remind you that OEFFA is a member of Community Shares Giving of Mid-Ohio, a workplace giving federation (collecting donations as payroll at Federations workplaces that allow us to participate). I represent OEFFA on the Board of Directors of CoSMO, Governing Committee, and am Chair of the Access Committee. My participation in these governance activities is part of how OEFFA qualifies to share in the “undesignated funds” (donations made not to a specific CoSMO member agency but to CoSMO as a whole). In 2008, we earned our full share of those undesignated funds, which totaled $56,622 (out of total campaign pledged of $738,581.65; all but that $56,622 was designated for specific organizations).

As part of my work in CoSMO, I am always seeking potential workplaces in which we might be accepted as part of the workplace giving campaigns (typically alongside United Way). The key to this is knowing someone in that workplace that will be an advocate for us. Thus, if you know of anyone working in a place which might be a good target for CoSMO’s access efforts, please let me know.

Membership We currently have 1,687 members. (Compare this to 1,516 members that I reported at the January board meeting, and the 1,566 at this time last year).

Annual We mailed the annual appeal to approximately 2,200 addresses. With your help, we Appeal added notes (and in some cases also called) about 100 of these recipients. We received 62 donations, for a total of $13,092, ranging in size from $5 to $5,000.

And . . . During the Columbus Foundation’s Match Day in December, we received donations from 9 individuals, totaling about $6,500, which the Columbus Foundation matched with an additional $3,000.

[That makes “end of year” donations equal to roughly $22,000!]

(Plus another ~ $1,200 in donations from various sources, since mid-November)

Program Work

Conference That was a fantastic conference, wasn’t it? Please see Renee Hunt’s Conference Report for a summary of this event.

Farm The summer Farm Tour series has taken shape under the guidance of Mike Anderson. Tours The OEFFA tours will include 13 farms, and our partners are contributing an additional 10 to the series. I will be circulating a sign-up sheet at the Board meeting and asking for your help in hosting one or more tours on behalf of OEFFA.

Growing For several reasons, we decided to hold off on offering Organics 201 until later (much Organics later) this year. Mike and I have met with Deb Stinner and Kathy Blielek from the OFFER Program to begin designing this course. We have a format that we’re very excited about using, that will allow participants to walk away with the better part of a transition plan in place. We expect to hold Organics 201 in December of 2009. After that, we will repeat Organics 101 and then offer Organics 201 for a final time in 2010.

Working The new Farm Bill provides major support for transitioning to organic, particularly with through the EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentive Program), administered by NRCS. NRCS OEFFA has had several meetings with them over the last 6 months, first to indicate our interest and willingness to help them better understand the correspondences between the organic standards and NRCS practice standards on which EQIP payments are based, and then to help flesh out those details. Mike Anderson and I have had two subsequent meetings with their technical staff, aimed at identifying those practice standards which would be most beneficial to organic producers and also to help establish a ranking system for applicants.

Our additional interest it to offer to NRCS training aimed at their own professional staff, to help them build their internal capacity to provide technical assistance to organic producers. To this end, I am trying to start a conversation with them about partnering on a SARE PDP (Professional Development Program) grant that would provide that training.

Dairy The Judge handed down his ruling in early April and unfortunately the Ohio Department Labeling of Agriculture largely prevailed. The dairy labeling rule, as proposed by the ODA, will go into effect (products must be labeled with the equivalent of “from cows not treated with rBGH,” and contiguous to that statement must be the information that “the FDA has found no significant difference . . . “). The one possible exception might be for small sized containers.

It is not yet known whether or not the plaintiffs in the case (International Dairy Foods Association and Organic Trade Association) will appeal.

Staffing Hans Gorsuch resigned his position on April 7th (at the end of his new employee introductory period). We plan to contract out the layout work for the farm tour brochure and Good Earth Guide, and expect to have a new Communications Coordinator in early to mid-May, in time for that person to oversee the next newsletter.