Fall 2020 Newsletter
October 31, 2020
SOFS produces a quarterly newsletter that will highlight food resilience, sustainability and related issues on developments at regional and global levels. Email us to receive our newsletters in your email in-box at info@southernoregonfoodsolutions.org.
Greetings from Southern Oregon Food Solutions. The events of 2020 since our last newsletter, have made us – now more than ever – mindful that we need to find ways to help our community become more resilient, not just in words, but in deeds. Between COVID 19 and the dreadful fires locally, our food system is in distress. Local farmers, the unhoused population, the restaurants that normally rely on tourism – all are impacted. So, as summer has waned, and as fall is swiftly moving along, we wanted to provide news and updates from our perspective.
To begin, we want to re-focus on why we exist, which is to combat climate change – which many are now calling – and it will become more and more appropriate – climate chaos, or climate crisis – and our recognition that food production and food waste are significant factors that can be managed to mitigate climate change impacts and moreover to “drawdown” the impacts of food waste and food production, i.e. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
To that end, we – Southern Oregon Food Solutions are very excited and proud to be a co-sponsor for this upcoming event on Nov. 10 and Nov. 17 – The Soil Symposium 2020. This symposium, will be focusing on farmers who: a. have land at their disposal, and b. can contribute to carbon sequestration, and c. who would like to participate in fighting climate change, and d. who would benefit from a revenue stream to offset rising costs of transportation. We urge our supporters to sign up to attend. This is the link to sign up to register: http://www.soilsymposium2020.org/register
Please read about why this is a crucial step forward for Oregon to fight climate change, and for local farmers to benefit financially as they participate in a program that will replenish our local soils and benefit Oregon’s climate action plan goals. The symposium will also be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the basics and the science behind regenerative agriculture (making soil healthy).
We also wanted to recommend to those we can reach that there is support for individual households who are looking to help in the fight against climate change. Emerging Futures Network is putting together a four part series of zero-waste household workshops which will be held virtually (of course – because of COVID 19). We urge everyone in our community to sign up for these workshops to learn how every household can make a difference in the fight against climate change. Please use this link to sign up for these workshops – taking place in November and the first part of December. Here is the facebook link with more info on the workshops,
And here is the link to register for the workshops: https://fb.me/e/4UolZg3p7
And lastly, we wanted to inform our community on what we – Southern Oregon Food Solutions have been deliberating on over the summer and until now. We took stock of each member who attended our meetings to find out what they were interested in and what they felt they could commit to doing. We also educated ourselves with some background information about community wide composting. The items that have shaken out thus far for where we may focus on in the future are: food diversion from landfills – the first level of which is redirecting surpluses to those in need, and the second level is composting, and then also education – about our local food system, and optimizing food systems in general. We are looking for avenues of collaboration with other community organizations, and we are committing to education opportunities through existing and new channels. Although we are a nacent organization, we aspire to make significant contributions to the community in our shared future. Please visit our website at https://southernoregonfoodsolutions.org to get updates and stay informed of what we are up to. Thank you for all that you do, and we hope our community will join in our journey.
