Cascade Harvest Coalition

Supporting Farmers

Supporting Consumers

Building Healthy Communities

Activities and Events

The Cascade Harvest Coalition through a variety of activities and events provides opportunities to help build strong, collaborative partnerships throughout the region and state to address a variety of community food system issues.

v Agricultural Programs

Since March 2002, the Cascade Harvest Coalition is the proud home and steward of two unique, regional agricultural programs: Puget Sound Fresh and Washington FarmLink.  Puget Sound Fresh is the region’s premier consumer education and product identification program.  Puget Sound Fresh educates consumers in the 12 counties that touch Puget Sound about the health and environmental benefits of buying and eating locally-grown fresh produce.  Washington FarmLink is the state’s leading program to link aspiring farmers and landowners and help build sustainable farming operations.  Washington FarmLink offers a matching program, resource center, and workshops to help aspiring farmers and landowners achieve their goals. 

Farm-to-Table: Connecting Local Farmers with Local Food Buyers provides access to new markets and expanding sales for locally grown farm products. The program develops connections between local farmers and the diversity of food service buyers, including restaurants, retailers, school districts, the military, hospitals, prisons, and other institutions where food is served. The program began with a pilot project linking local farmers with the University of Washington Housing and Food Services in fall 2003. That effort was followed by a number of farmer-buyer workshops throughout Western Washington with the goal of getting more fresh local products in school cafeterias and other food service venues and increasing the bottom line for local farmers.

The Puget Sound Food Project involves a strategic planning process and study to assess the feasibility of a multi-purpose agricultural production center for Puget Sound producers. Begun in September 2007, the project is actively engaging small and mid-sized family farms, local food buyers, business leaders and local decision makers in a participatory planning process to identify current and planned farmer-buyer relationships; explore and assess the feasibility of various enterprises for the multi-purpose agriculture production center; provide quality information on the risks/benefits of alternatives for decision making; identify new opportunities through the investigative process; and help identify additional partners and funding for specific business development efforts.

v Harvest Celebrations

Participation in regional events promoting and supporting local agriculture is key to engaging farmers, consumers, marketers, policymakers, and other members of the food and farm system and to supporting the viability of local agriculture.  Harvest Celebrations foster an understanding of the local cultural heritage and diversity of community-based agriculture.  When the community understands where, how, and by whom their food is produced, the health of the community and the health of the landscape surrounding it are made vital and strong. 

v Food Lust

The Coalition’s annual, on-farm gala and fundraising event. This one-of-a-kind extravaganza pairs farmers and chefs in a true celebration of locally-grown food. Adding lots of fun and a little competition to the event are the ‘bottle brawl’ and ‘dessert dash.’ Silent and live auctions provide guests with the opportunity to take home some great experiences, food, art and other local offerings. Live music and good stories add to the sense of celebration. All proceeds support the work of the Coalition. This year’s Food Lust will be held at Fall City Farms on June 7, 2008. Junkyard Jane will once again provide the foot stomping music. Seating is limited, so make plans to attend!

v Agriculture Commissions and Advisory Boards

Understanding farming and farm issues by local and regional decision makers is critical to helping maintain farm viability. The Cascade Harvest Coalition encourages and supports creation of new advisory committees as a way to give farmers a voice in local decision making. The Coalition provides access to a speakers bureau and model enabling legislation to support development of agriculture commissions and advisory boards. 

v Conferences, Workshops, Special Events

As part of the Cascade Harvest Coalition’s efforts to provide a forum for enhancing collaboration and education on issues vital to the region’s agricultural community, it will sponsor or support workshops, seminars, conferences and other special events.  Each event will be designed to reach out to residents, decision-makers and others about the important contributions of local agriculture and to explore implementation of strategies to address the critical issues facing agriculture in our region. 

As a co-sponsor of Farm-to-Table:  Building Healthy Foodsheds and Community, held in March 2000, the Coalition collaborated with other agencies and organizations to explore the many connections between the food we eat and the health of our local farms, culture and communities.  The Coalition helped co-sponsor the National Community Food Security Coalition Conference, “Eating Locally, Thinking Globally”, held in Seattle in October 2002.   The conference was concerned with the issues of education, hunger, nutrition, and local agriculture.  The conference brought together US and Canadian leaders to review strategies for securing a universal supply of nutritious, affordable and sustainably produced food for everyone. 

We continue to work collaboratively with grass roots, educational and other organizations around the state to address key community food system issues. The Coalition supported the Family Farm Summit in Wenatchee in October 2003, Growing a Regional Food Economy – a forum to promote farm viability, food access, economic development and environmental stewardship in King County – in January 2004, The New Food Entrepreneur: Value-Added Processing for Farm Profitability and Sustainable Food Systems” conference in April 2005, and the Farmer-Chef Connection Conference held in Seattle in February 2006, 2007 and 2008.

Cascade Harvest Coalition

4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, Room 123, Seattle, WA 98103

phone: (206) 632-0606     fax: (206) 632-1080 email: mary@oz.net