Category Archives: Sustainable Food

Don’t Miss “Bee Fest” on June 16!

Welcome to SLCgreen Connections, an occasional series highlighting SLCgreen’s fantastic local partners—the people and organizations with whom we work closely to make Salt Lake City a greener, more vibrant, and sustainable city!

CATALYST Magazine is a long-time community asset in Salt Lake City, featuring frequent news and tips for sustainability-minded folks. After recently receiving their 501(c)3 status, CATALYST now helps organize community events, including the upcoming Bee Fest.

 Bee Fest

By Ardyn Ford, SLCgreen intern

Mark your calendars for the 8th Annual Bee Fest in Salt Lake City on June 16!

Organized for the first time by the team at CATALYST Magazine, this year the festival will celebrate all pollinators, including bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, and the plants that they love.

For the past seven years, Bee Fest has been organized by the folks at Slow Food Utah. However, change was afoot and Greta deJong, the editor and publisher of CATALYST, decided to take it on. Coincidentally, Greta had been in the process of planning a Dandelion Festival, so agreeing to take on Bee Fest was only natural.

After all, the golden flower is one of the first sources of food for bees in the spring. Continue reading →

It’s Farmers’ Market Season!

Two vegetable vendors at a market selling green beans, sweet carrots, beans and other vegetables.

Vendors for a local Salt Lake City Market. Photo courtesy of Utahs Against Hunger.

by Emily Seang, SLCgreen intern

There’s no better way to enjoy the summer than to visit a farmers’ market!

All throughout Salt Lake City there are many opportunities to join communities in celebrating locally grown foods. Supporting our farmers’ markets is a great way not only to purchase fresh, healthy fare, but also to support local farmers and the important role they play in our community.

We’ve got good news . . . the season has started and many markets begin this week!

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Utahns Against Hunger Strives for a More Sustainable Food System

Welcome to SLCgreen Connections, an occasional series highlighting SLCgreen’s fantastic local partners—the people and organizations with whom we work closely to make Salt Lake City a greener, more vibrant, and sustainable city!

By Ardyn Ford, SLCgreen intern

Hunger. It is desperate and overpowering. Everyone has experienced it, but for some, it is extreme and long-term. Weeks go by with a deep, gnawing sensation inside, a pain so fierce that it almost feels alive.

This is a reality for more than 1 in 9 Utahns.

Food insecurity occurs when people cannot afford to buy enough food. It has significant impacts on productivity, happiness, and health, and because it impacts low-income families and individuals, it is often accompanied by threats to other basic needs such as shelter and clothing.

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Salt Lake City’s Sustainable Food Initiatives

Why does Salt Lake City have a food policy program? Community gardens, an incubator kitchen, pesticide free resources, farmers’ markets… it all helps foster a healthy city and flourishing economy.  Watch the video and then scroll through the blog post to find more details about the programs and initiatives mentioned by our program manager Bridget Stuchly.

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The Square Kitchen Opens Today!

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 . . . It’s a project 8 years in the making.

Food. It does more than just nourish our bodies. It’s a vehicle for transmitting culture and building community. It sustains families and farmers. It employs a huge workforce.

Food is integral to our economy, our environment, and our families. That’s one reason why SLCgreen has a food policy program which aims to increase the amount of local food grown, sold, and purchased in Salt Lake City.

Today we are thrilled to celebrate a huge milestone for a project we’ve been working on since 2010—the opening of a culinary incubator kitchen.

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Eliminating Food Waste Helps the Earth and the Hungry

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Welcome to SLCgreen Connections, an occasional series highlighting SLCgreen’s fantastic local partners—the people and organizations with whom we work closely to make Salt Lake City a greener, more vibrant, and sustainable city!

by Ardyn Ford, SLCgreen intern

It is the rideshare of philanthropy: simple, quick, and on your own time. Designed with the fast-paced nature of the modern world in mind, Food Rescue US makes it easy to make a significant difference without overbooking your calendar.

Currently, Americans waste 40 billion pounds of food every year. This translates to 40% of the food supply. On the other side of this waste stands 50 million food insecure Americans who are unsure where their next meal is coming from. If you do the math, you’ll discover that the food being wasted could feed 36 million people three meals a day. There is a clear disconnect here.

Food waste is also a large source of carbon pollution–that includes all the wasted energy it took to grow, transport, and package the food in the first place, as well as the direct emissions rotting food produces in landfills.

So this Earth Week, learn more about what this unique organization is doing about it– and how you can get involved!

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Urban Food Connections of Utah Brings Local Fare to our City and our Plates

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Welcome to SLCgreen Connections, an occasional series highlighting SLCgreen’s fantastic local partners—the people and organizations with whom we work closely to make Salt Lake City a greener, more vibrant, and sustainable city!

 

by Ardyn Ford, SLCgreen intern and Sophia Nicholas

Salt Lake’s historic Rio Grande Depot houses the Winter Market, an event that brings the city to life every Saturday from November to April. If you haven’t been yet, make a beeline there this week! The market is open through April 21.

Once there, you’ll find tables lined with colorful, fresh produce filling the large hall, while locals bustle around, creating a vivacious energy that stands out against the backdrop of gray days. Continue reading →

Salt Lake County Seeking Local Farmers to Develop Agricultural Land

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Do you know a local farmer or organization that is seeking agricultural land to develop?

As part of Salt Lake County’s vision to create more opportunities for locally produced food, the Open Space and Urban Farming programs are seeking local farmers to manage land at Wheadon Park and Big Cottonwood Regional Park. The three separate sites have a total of 20.3 farmable acres.

The County is soliciting proposals from qualified firms “Proposer / Contractor” to provide management and operation of commercial farming enterprise at Big Cottonwood Regional Park (7 acres) and at two parcels at Wheadon Park (3.4 and 9.9 acres).

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Round Three of Funding for Sustainable Farming Now Open

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 22, 2018

Salt Lake City and Urban Food Connections Announce Round Three of Funding for Local Food Microgrant Program

 

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BUG Farms, a recipient of the first funding round from the Local Food Microgrant Program.

Applications are now open for local commercial farmers to seek assistance in expanding their operation and production of more organically-grown fruits and vegetables.

Salt Lake City launched the Local Food Microgrant Program in February 2017 in partnership with Urban Food Connections of Utah, the non-profit organization that runs the Downtown Farmers Market, Rio Grande Winter Market and Tuesday Harvest Market. The Salt Lake City Council, on the recommendation of the Administration and its Sustainability Department, in 2016 set apart $85,000 to initially fund the program.

The program offers funding to local farmers who want to expand their operations with sustainability in mind. The grants help farmers access technology, education, tools and equipment to grow more sustainable produce.

“Our goal is to increase the amount of healthy, locally-grown, organic food available in Salt Lake City,” said Mayor Jackie Biskupski. “By providing small grants to farmers, we are also supporting local, ecologically sustainable agriculture and the City’s economy.”

The third funding round is now open and will award $15,000. The microgrant program has so far generated substantial interest among small-scale commercial farmers. Continue reading →

Sustainability 2017 Year in Review

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2018 is here! Once again, it is time to take note of all the achievements we’ve made over the past year, with your help and the support of many other partners both in and outside of Salt Lake City government.

As we look back on 2017, we want to share with you what we have done, where we are now, and what our goals are as we look ahead.

We publish an annual report detailing our major accomplishments each year.  You can read the highlights from 2017 below, or download the full report here.

Thank you to our many partners who’ve helped us along the way. And happy New Year from all of us at SLCgreen!

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