Local Food & Farms Investment

More than half a million dollars is pouring into Southwest Colorado in an effort to improve access to affordable local food. 16 area food providers are the recipients of a small business grant from the Colorado Department of Agriculture. You're watching the Local News Network brought to you by a Blondie's Trophy Room and Choice Building Supply. I'm Connor Shreve. The grant is meant to increase access to and lower prices for healthy food in low income, low access areas of the state. Durango based nonprofit, Good Food Collective worked to connect the businesses with the money.

For the most part, these businesses are using that money to purchase equipment or cover operating expenses that will help them scale their businesses. For example, Esmeralda's Mexican Grocery Store in Cortez is using the grant funding to purchase a walk-in cooler and refrigerated produce display shelves so that they can start stocking and selling fresh fruits and vegetables.

Esmeralda's Mexican Grocery store in Cortez is upgrading its checkout technology to accept SNAP cards, which are used by low income food assistance recipients. Good Food Collective stepped in to help local companies with the grant.

The Colorado Department of Agriculture realized that in order to spread the word about this grant opportunity in every corner, in every community in this state, and make sure that this opportunity was available equitably, they realized that they needed to work with some community based organizations who already have relationships with the businesses they're trying to target.

After the Good Food Collective was identified as one of the groups that could help the CDA reach Southwest Colorado, the local nonprofit helped its local partners apply.

16 grants were awarded in Southwest Colorado. And 14 of those either heard about the grant from us or received some kind of support writing their grant application. So I feel like those numbers prove that that was a really effective like cross-sector partnership.

Good Food Collective's Food Security Director, Lauren Ames, hopes the community's success leveraging the non-profit for government funds serves as a proof of concept for future food access work.

We sort of work in Southwest Colorado, and so to have now a really solid relationship with a state agency like the Colorado Department of Agriculture, I think will be really important, really valuable moving forward to continue leveraging sort of those statewide opportunities and resources and bringing them to Southwest Colorado, connecting them with our local agriculture, our local food system.

The Colorado Department of Agriculture is offering a tax credit through 2030 with the same goal of affordable access to local produce. The Good Food Collective is pledging to keep helping local producers take advantage of the state benefits. You can learn more about this story and others at montezumalocal.news. Thanks for watching this edition of the Local News Network. I'm Connor Shreve.