Community Food Assessment: Columbia Gorge Region
Having a community conversation about food and farming
Gorge Grown is currently in the final stages of a comprehensive 5-county community food assessment. The project began in 2007, when through a USDA Community Food Projects Planning Grant GGFN conducted a Community Food Assessment for Hood River County. The assessment, completed in 2008, helped collect vital information regarding our local food system. Work continued through 2010 on the other four counties, and the 5 county reports are now complete!
1. What is a CFA?
A Community Food Assessment (CFA) is a project that looks at food issues in the community: both for consumers (what do people eat, do they have enough to eat, etc) and producers (how much food do we grow here, what do people grow, etc).
It is made up of: a community survey, interviews, discussion groups, and secondary research. At the end of the project it will be a comprehensive report that will be available to the public. We will use it to identify actions to improve food access in the area for people of all incomes, especially fresh, locally-grown food like vegetables, fruits, meat, and dairy.
Our purpose is: to identify both resources and needs in the community surrounding food security, agriculture, and health, and to ultimately improve access to locally grown food, especially for people with low and moderate incomes.
2. Why are we doing this work?
For example, we’d like to expand the number of community gardens in the region as a way to increase residents’ self-reliance and our regions’ food security, but first we must gather information on how many people are interested in growing their own food, cooking with it, and how many would like to learn how to preserve some of the excess produce from their garden for the winter or for sale at a local farmers’ market? Who has land available for a community garden, how many people have interest in the vicinity of that land?
4. Documents
At this time the following documents are available for download:
(FILES REMOVED - we are re-formatting and updating these in preparation for our 2010 Food Forum. Look for revised reports available for all 5 Gorge counties in early May!)
1. Hood River County Community Food Assessment Executive Summary (PDF, 4 pages, 2 MB)
2. Hood River County Community Food Assessment Recommendation Summary (PDF, 3 pages, 1 MB)
3. Hood River County Community Food Assessment Full Report (PDF, 85 pages, 22 MB - large!)
Contact us if you would like more information or other materials. If you use these documents as reference materials, please use proper citation. We are happy to share survey templates and other tools with organizations looking to launch their own CFA.
