In the happy tradition of preaching to the converted, three women from the marketing team of Colorado Proud set up a booth Saturday at the Durango Farmers Market to raise awareness about buying local.
As usual, the marketplace was choked with Durango’s hippie archetypes: shaggily bearded men, hemp-clad women and thrilled children whose clothes were stained by the delicacies they’d gorged on.
The Colorado Proud women stood out from the locals, wearing smart matching T-shirts and brandishing pamphlets about their campaign, “Choose Colorado,” which aims to encourage Colorado consumers to buy tasty, healthy and local foods instead of those grown elsewhere.
Colorado Proud’s Tera Keatts said in the course of the hot morning, hundreds of people had interrupted their pursuit of beeswax candles, organic kale and live worms to stop by the booth for information.
“Of course, a lot of people here already understand this issue,” she said.
The group was in Durango as part of its three-week statewide tour promoting locally grown, raised and processed food. Keatts said it kicked off Thursday in Denver, and Friday they were in Grand Junction. Today, the women were heading to Alamosa and Salida.
The tour will end at the Colorado State Fair, which will start Aug. 23 in Pueblo.
Keatts said she enjoyed her time in Durango. Though Keatts eats meat, she said she did not feel like an outcast while dining here, perhaps because when eating dinner at the Mahogany Grille the previous evening, she ordered the vegetable pasta.
While Durangoans consider their town rampant with dietary restrictions – it’s rarely safe to bring a dish with gluten, nuts, dairy, meat, fish or non-organic produce to a social occasion without calling ahead – Keatts took this pickiness in stride.
“Durango really isn’t alone in being conscious of their food products, where they come from, how they were raised, their lifestyle,” she said.
“Being aware of the food chain, Colorado is sort of leading the local-food movement,” said her colleague Jen Miller.
The Colorado Proud program was created by the Colorado Department of Agriculture in 1999 to promote Colorado food and agricultural products that are grown, raised or processed in the state.
At the Colorado Proud Booth, Keatts was plying receptive locals with marketing literature, including a directory of local farmers markets throughout the state.
“There are about 110 listed,” she said.
She warned that the directory wasn’t comprehensive, though, because some local farmers markets operate unbeknownst to the Denver-based group. She and Miller agreed, however, that using the directory as a travel guide would be a delicious way to tour the state.
In a press release sent ahead of the group’s stint in Durango, Wendy White, spokeswoman for Colorado Proud, said, “Agriculture is a vital part of Colorado’s future – providing more than 170,000 jobs and contributing more than $40 billion to the state’s economy annually, while also feeding the world with more than $1 billion in exported products ... The Durango community plays an important role in this success.”
