I am be
ginning my second internship with Ogallala Commons and the High Plains Food Co-op. I am excited about what we were able to accomplish during my last internship and the potential we have to expand the access to local and sustainably grown food in both Denver and Northwest Kansas. I have some great potential projects that I am working on. We are expanding the program of providing bundles of local fruits and vegetables to senior centers in Northwest Kansas. I am also going to be testing out a new distribution model for a CSA in my neighborhood.
When I started the first internship with the High Plains Food Co-op I had recently graduated from college and had spent two years studying the challenges in the way food is currently produced and consumed. In my first blog I talked about the pesticide treadmill and the problems that are on a global scale.
Now after spending time working on these issues, I have realized many of the larger systemic problems are not usually what I was working on in my internship. Even though they were always in the back of my mind, the main part of the local food system that I was working on was just making sure the connections between people that believe in improving our food system happened. Big steps in improving our food system were just a matter of making sure that two organizations resources could be in the same spot at the same time.
