The Great Falls Food Hub (GFFH) announce the launch of Local Food Matters, a community-wide conversation focused on next steps in creating more resilient food infrastructure to sustain farms and healthy, locally sourced food and food products. Now, with a commercial kitchen, cooler/freezer storage and a pre-development grant to investigate other ways it can serve local farmers and growers, the project is establishing deeper roots with capacity to better engage the public.

A seed that was originally planted by a Post Oil Solutions group in 2009 and furthered by South Eastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) and other volunteers for almost a decade, The Great Falls Food Hub opened in 2019 and is among the many shoots of the initial local food system seeds that were planted through potlucks, education and pre-covid community building conversations.

Educational programs in schools, including hands-on work in gardens and improved access to local food in the region are among some of the results that sprouted from the original Great Falls Food Hub seeds.

Now, with a physical space on the corner of Depot/Island Streets, abutting the Bellows Falls Train Station, the Great Falls Food Hub’s facility is being utilized by food producers/manufacturers like Smokin’ Bowls, C&K Farms, 7 Balls Brewing and while Finallie Ferments grew out of the space, it exemplifies how the space incubates new business ideas. Exploring whether or not more shared processing equipment, expanded storage/manufacturing facilities, marketing, distribution and/or cooperative support systems are needed by farmers and food producers is one of the main focal points of Local Food Matters conversations.