The Summit Food Coalition continues to impact the public as they have for over eight years. While they are based in the Akron/Canton area, their influence is felt for miles beyond the city limits. Beth Knorr, the Executive Director of the Summit Food Coalition, advocates for local foods and community gardens. She believes it’s crucial for the public to connect with local farmers in a mutually beneficial way. Direct marketing is one prime example of connecting farmers to consumers. The public gains easy access to healthy local foods, and farmers advocate for themselves and share their expertise.
The benefits don’t stop at local food availability. The Summit Food Coalition aims to create a self-sustaining system. Working with food banks, local kitchens, and community gardens is the first step. However, once these processes are in place, it’s easier to advocate for the public while in communications with stakeholders and partners. The best way to start these conversations is through statistics and data. Realizing this, Beth reached out to the Ohio Food County Network, and they recommended that she check out the Knowledge Exchange’s Ohio Food System Map.
Beth and her team utilized the map to gain insight into the local infrastructure in each county. They could now locate specific places where people could access nutritious and healthy foods. The map also assisted in identifying gaps and opportunities they could use to their advantage. Each community is different from the next; this map showed the best access points for connecting the public and local farmers markets more efficiently. Thanks to this statewide data, the Summit Food Coalition garnered more help from the county and public in the form of larger community participation and widespread outreach.
This information could now be used in stakeholder conversations to validate the necessity of funding and where those dollars should be applied. This map became a starting point to initiate these conversations. The coalition wanted more than short-term fixes, they support structural changes to the system. While adding food banks and farmer’s markets can help communities more immediately, long-term goals include building grocery stores in food deserts and making additional resources available for families experiencing temporary food insecurity.