Agriculture Forum: Michigan farms and good nutrition | Business

We cannot have healthy food without farms that are healthy themselves — healthy environmentally and healthy economically. March is the perfect month for honoring that truth.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics since 1980 has chosen March as National Nutrition Month to promote good nutrition. The organization chooses an annual theme and offers a series of easy and healthful eating tips, with an emphasis on personal dietary choices. This year’s theme is “Personalize Your Plate.”

We have an extra reason in 2021 to celebrate nutrition — Michigan’s Governor Whitmer signed a new proclamation making March Food and Agriculture Month. It’s so gratifying to see we are not leaving our farms and farmers out of the healthy food and nutrition messaging.

With National Nutrition Month and Michigan’s Food and Agriculture both happening in March, the two promotions combine to celebrate our state’s bounty of healthy foods and encourage all of us to eat foods that provide the nutritional health we all deserve.

These messages are happening at the right place at the right time.

Good nutrition begins on our farms, continues through our food cultures, nutrition knowledge and cooking skills and ends on dinner plates. I find it both personally and professionally comforting to see how strong and resilient our local food system can be.

For people and organizations throughout the food world — farmers, distributors, grocery stores, food pantries, restaurants, home cooks — 2020 was a year of having to do things differently. People learned, executed on new ideas, figured new ways of doing business.

Let’s make 2021 a celebration of the innovations that came from those pivots, because there are so many: the new and stronger collaborations forged between farmers and emergency food pantries; the use of videos to teach healthy cooking and food education lessons; the expansion of online ordering platforms for farmers markets; more community members getting tuned into community supported agriculture (CSA) programs; and the growth of telehealth for doctors and dietitian appointments. These opportunities have given farms, local food and nutrition conversations new ways to grow.

A simple truth stands behind every aspect of the work that Groundwork’s Farms, Food & Health programs do in the food system: Healthy, local food should not be a luxury, “a nice thing to have,” destined only for those who have the means to afford such food and live in ZIP codes that provide easy access to it.

As COVID-19 proved to us, local food is the only thing we have when the national food distribution systems are not meeting our needs or demands.

Let’s take advantage of National Nutrition Month and Michigan’s Food and Agriculture Month and celebrate that we are now more thoughtful and collaborative, and much more willing to try things that once seemed “out of reach.”

Choosing healthy and delicious foods grown right here by the hard working farmers in Michigan is the BEST way to Personalize Your Plates every day.

Paula Martin is the Food & Farming Policy Specialist at Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities.