The Year of Idaho Food Wraps Up
With 2011 coming to an end, so does the Year of Idaho Food (check out the projects accomplishments this Wednesday in the Boise Weekly.)
As a result, Northwest Food News, web host for the Year of Idaho Food, will be making some adjustments.
Some Things Will Change
My contributions to Northwest Food News will be less frequent (at least initially) due to Boise State Radio’s decision to drop the frequency of my radio show “Edible Idaho” from weekly to monthly beginning with the New Year (if you have an opinion about that, contact the station). And since my contributions to the Boise Weekly were tied to those weekly radio programs, my print stories and their resulting website counterparts on Northwest Food News will also appear less frequently—at least for the time being.
But Some Things Won’t Change
Despite the initial drop in frequency of my contributions, many of the Year of Idaho Food’s best features—a web forum encouraging people from all over the state to contribute food and farming stories to Northwest Food News, the project’s food-centric events calendar, its Facebook and Twitter pages—have value that clearly transcend the Year of Idaho Food’s finite, 12 month timeline.
Therefore, Northwest Food News will continue to encourage submissions from anyone with a food, farm or garden story they’d like to share. And if you have food or agricultural events coming up, let me know and I’ll continue to post those events to the site calendar. I’ll also continue to post interesting links to the Year of Idaho Food Facebook and Twitter pages.
And Then There’s the Future
In the year to come, my hope is to expand the reach of Northwest Food News, increasing the frequency of stories throughout Idaho and beyond, making its content truly reflect the website’s title, as well as soliciting the help of other regular writers to increase the site’s diversity of voices and geographic perspective.
To accomplish those goals, I’m devoting a little more time to fundraising—and if any of you have suggestions in that regard, please get in touch.
As for the original creators of the Year of Idaho Food, Amy Hutchinson and Janie Burns, they’ve moved on to the next phase of a much larger, ten year project to encourage Idahoans to grow and consume more local food (currently Idahoans get a paltry 2 percent of their food from local sources). This year Hutchinson and Burns are working on what they call “The Healthy Dozen,” an in-depth look at twelve of Idaho’s most important agricultural products. You can follow their work on the Treasure Valley Food Coalition’s website.
You can also learn more about the accomplishments of the Year of Idaho Food at a Fettuccine Forum presentation on February 2nd with Amy Hutchinson, Janie Burns and myself. The discussion will be held at the Rose Room in downtown Boise.
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture.
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