Jarrod and Tracy Regan, owners of Raider Ridge Cafe, like to serve locally grown food at their restaurant.
That’s what brought them to Growing Partners of Southwest Colorado’s sixth annual Homegrown Food Retreat at Fort Lewis College on Saturday.
Attended by about 250 people and based out of the Student Union Ball Rooms, the event is a series of presentations and workshops to advocate local food production and regional food systems security, and to facilitate the networking of food producers and business owners.
It began with a presentation Friday night by Russell Evans, director of Transition Lab in Montrose, which recently won the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Climate CoLab “Local Solution” contest for being the most viable replicable and effective model for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions and creating a more sustainable future.
Evans said he was excited to see the enthusiasm in Durango.
“I’m really grateful for conferences like this, just to be the conversation-starter and develop some basic relationships and go from there,” he said.
He was brought to the conference by GPSWC’s Celeste Greene, who said local food systems equal local economy.
“For me, it makes so much sense in the economic development on our community,” she said. “You get to put money back into the community, and it can only grow. That’s really important to me.”
The event was hosted by the FLC Environmental Center, which director Rachel Landis described as a professional staff of two, backed by “an army of impassioned and energetic folks.”
She said she is proud of FLC for being the 21st college to sign a national commitment, called the Real Food Challenge, to shift $1 billion in nationwide campus dining spending to “real foods” by 2020.
FLC’s goal is to shift 20 percent of its purchasing dollars to real foods – those that are fair, humane, ecologically sound and/or local – by 2020. Sodexo, FLC’s campus food service, supports the movement.
“We’ve been a partnership the whole time,” Landis said. “We have 13,000 diners here a week, and they’re hungry.”
Sodexo’s head chef at FLC, Pedro Ulibarri, said he supported healthier meals with local ingredients for the student body.
“You can go to the farm and see what they’re doing. You can talk to the rancher,” he said. “You know how it’s made.”
“The point of this is for people to make connections and build relationships,” Greene said. “I love to sit back and take a breath and watch people talk – to watch people learn. There’s restaurant owners, food growers, college students. It can all grow, and it can all flourish.”
Meanwhile, the Regans were looking forward to making those connections. In their cafe, they have a list of food sources, so their customers can know where the tomato in their wrap was grown or where the strawberries in their smoothie were picked.
“It isn’t random,” Jarrod Regan said, “but it’s actually coming from that farm, or that one you can see from the trail at Twin Buttes.”
He said he loves pointing out, “that’s where our lettuce came from. Our spinach is grown over there.”
bmathis@durangoherald.com
