Building a Roaring Fork Valley Agricultural Ecosystem

Seed Peace is beginning to organize conversations with local farmers, organizations, and food businesses to develop the concept of a Roaring Fork Valley Agricultural Ecosystem.

In addition to the traditional challenges of a career in farming, agrarians in the Roaring Fork Valley face unique roadblocks including a persisting and worsening drought, lack of affordable housing, increased costs of living, and lack of access to farming or ranching land. These challenges contribute to an insecure foodshed that is vulnerable to disruptions and discourages the growth of local farming.

We envision a cooperative Agricultural Ecosystem with a robust farmer support program that has the capacity to create and support careers in agriculture for the Roaring Fork Valley, and develop a sustainable local foodshed.

We’re currently seeking funding to conduct a feasibility study that will identify the most effective ways that we can support local agriculture. This may include:

Providing shared agricultural infrastructure like storage & freezer space, farm product processing facilities, commercial kitchen for creating value added products, classroom & education spaces, distribution outlets, seed banking infrastructure, and agricultural research facilities.

Providing cooperative agricultural business services like collective marketing, cooperative distribution methods, tool & equipment sharing, contract-based sales outlets, and links between new farmers and agricultural land opportunities.

Providing community services like nutrition & agricultural education, new opportunities for food & agricultural businesses, knowledge gathering for beneficial policy development, hunger relief programming, and aggregation for distribution of local food products.

We are actively seeking additional funding to advance this project to the next stage and welcome input from anyone looking to get involved. Please email [email protected] for more information.