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Thank you so much. Hi, everyone, it's Debora Kane. And you're dialing in to the National
Office, so we've got a small but mighty group here. So I thought we'd just do a quick round
of introductions so you guys know who's in the room, and then I want to do a little regional
call out and see who we've got on the line. So we have in the room Audrey Rowe. Audrey
Rowe. Sally? I'm Sally Smith, and I'm a (inaudible) Management Fellow here at FNS; and I work
with FNS and also Marketing Regulatory Programs. Brad (inaudible) with Farm to School. Elanor
Sturman -- I'm going to be speaking to you today, so I'll just wait and introduce myself
further. Laura Brown with the Farm to School Program. Great, and we're being joined by
Rich Lucas. Do we have anybody from the Western Regional Office on the line? We're here. This
is Marisa Cheung and Nancy (inaudible) from SNP and Kevin (Inaudible) from SNAP. Great,
welcome. How about the Southwest? How about the Midwest? Hi, Alan Shannon with Public
Affairs. Hey, Alan. Hey, Deborah. Hi, everyone. Hi.
How about the Mountain Plains? Hi, Deborah. This is Darlene, and I know there
are several other folks on as well from the Mountain Plains. Great, how about the Southeast?
How about the Northeast? How about the Mid Atlantic?
Hi, Deborah. This is Pat Dombroski, and there are other folks also on the line from MARO.
Great, hi, everyone. And I think we also might have some other colleagues from the National
Office who might be on the line who couldn't be here in person. Judith, do you want to
let us know who's on the line? Hi, this is Eileen Ferruggiaro. Hi, Eileen. Hi, this is
Tim Vasquez, Child Nutrition. Hey, Tim. Great, thanks so much, you guys, for joining us.
We'll probably have a few more folks join us either in your conference rooms or in ours,
but without too much further ado we should go ahead and get started. As was included
in the calendar invites, the purpose of today's conversation is just to learn a little bit
more about the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. I have been honored to serve
on the management team of Know Your Farmer for probably about the last year and have
been actively been participating and shaping the agenda for Know Your Farmer and have taken
great advantage of it, I have to say, to the degree to which it serves as a platform to
profile the work that we do at FNS. Hey, Diane. Nice to see you join us.
And so given that I've been so involved in the last year and seeing the power of the
Know Your Farmer program, I wanted to make sure that others within FNS were equally aware
and encourage you all to think about how the Know Your Farmer Program might support the
work that you do in addition to being such a great supporter of the Farm to School Program.
So without too much further ado, I want to hand it over to Elanor. And my understanding,
Elanor, is that you'll give us a brief overview. And then we've got a lot of time hopefully
for some back and forth with the program folks and with the regional folks, and we can have
a discussion with Elanor about plans for Know Your Farmer in FY14 and onward, and also how
some of the Know Your Farmer work syncs up with what we're working on at FNS. And I just
have to say as I introduce Elanor how excited I am to have her here. It's been a long time
coming, so thanks for joining us. Sure, thank you so much for the opportunity. Can folks
on the phone hear me okay? You don't actually have to answer; just let me know if you can't.
It's kind of a Catch 22. It's a real pleasure to be able to speak with you and the folks
who are joining us in person. I'm Elanor Starmer. I am the National Coordinator of the Know
Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative and a Quality Advisory to Secretary Vilsack on
local and regional food systems. So I'm helping look across the whole Department to see ways
that we can help to advance the Secretary's priorities in this area. And I'm going to
just do a quick run through of what exactly Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food is; talk
a little about some of the opportunities I see in terms of ways that we can work with
FNS and are already doing so; and then I'm going to finish up just with a quick overview
of some of the tools that we have that I hope will be useful for your work, particularly
for folks in the regions as you're working with people who are engaged in local food
systems issues. So this is probably going to be information that most, if not all, of
you are already familiar with. But I think it's helpful framing to talk about why local
food systems are a strategy that we're employing at USDA and how FNS fits into it. The inner
circle that you see here represents the stages of the food system. So that's everything from
producing the food, to processing, distribution, getting the food to consumers. And in the
local food system, all stages of that process are happening in the same general region.
So as a result, the research that we've done in various parts of USDA -- most recently
ERS -- has shown that the jobs generated, economic benefits and other benefits accrue
to that community where all these phases are happening. At the same time, though, there
are lots of other benefits that are associated with this system as well; and those are represented
in the outer circle here. So for example, healthy individuals, finding ways to get food
from farms to communities opens up a lot of opportunities in terms of increasing access
to healthy foods. It brings the community together. It has opportunities for preserving
farmland and on and on. I think the key thing here is that what makes a local food system
unique is that the players in the system have these values or goals in mind. So whether
you're talking about a farmer or a business or a local organization or a local government,
the stakeholders are thinking about these goals in sort of the outer part of the circle
and how those goals and values can be advanced through the local food system. So as a consequence,
I think there are a few reasons why local food is a real opportunity for FNS. First,
the goal about healthy food access is really explicit in the way the system is being built.
So again, all the stakeholders are really thinking not just about, "How can we make
money?" but "How can we also advance the value of having healthy individuals and healthy
communities?" The second is that stakeholders, as a result of having these values built in,
are willing to be a little creative in thinking of ways to do that. They're willing to take
some risks. We see a lot of opportunities for pilot projects, trying out new ideas.
I think Deborah will attest as she has done her Farm to School work, there are a lot of
challenges in terms of procurement of local foods into schools. Other folks look at challenges
to getting fresh produce, for example, into communities that don't have it. But this is
a space where people are really invested in trying to find creative strategies to make
that work. And so as a consequence, there are a lot of opportunities for partnerships
in this area for FNS -- a lot of opportunities for us to be working with people who are really
dedicated to this work, dedicated to the mission that FNS is serving, and are thinking creatively
about ways to do that. So local and regional food systems is a strategy to meet a lot of
different goals, so it's probably fairly obvious why it's something that the Secretary has
prioritized because both in FNS's space as well as in the spaces of other agencies in
the department, it's a strategy that we can use to advance these goals. The Secretary
identified supporting local and regional food as one of four pillars of USDA's work in the
second term for the Department. It's something I report to him every single month, and I
report on it to the White House as well every single month. For FNS, I'd like us to think
together about how this strategy can be used, or is already being used, to further your
mission. So how is it being used to increase access to healthy food? How is it being used
as an opportunity for nutrition education? I think there are lots of different ways that
we can be thinking about it and lots of work that's already happening across the agency
that really fits into this overarching goal. And I just listed on this slide a couple other
ways in which it meets goals for the Department for various agencies. All right, so with so
many agencies able to take advantage of this strategy to further their goals, there are
a lot of coordination and cross-agency collaboration opportunities that need to be pulled together;
and the mechanism that we use to do that is the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative.
So I want to kind of segue into talking a little bit about the structure and the mechanisms
that we use to coordinate and support this work. The main structure that we have is a
small management team that Deborah Kane sits on, as well as a couple of other folks from
different agencies in the Department. And we also have a task force that's made up of
actually about 50 people from different agencies. The Secretary put out a request several years
ago to the agencies to designate folks who were engaged in this space to sit on the task
force, and I'm very pleased that FNS is well represented there. Stacy Greenwood participates,
Eric Williams, Tracy [Mowe], representatives from Deborah's (inaudible) team, Sally Smith
is engaged as well. The management team of that small group is really the place where
we develop the agenda and the goals, and ways that we can meet the Secretary's priorities.
The task force is the space for coordination, for information sharing, and for thinking
about ways in which other agencies can support the work of their colleagues in different
parts of the Department. So a great example of how we did this in ways that furthers FNS's
goal is we had a team from FNS come in at the end of last year to brief our task force
on the effort to increase EBT at farmers' markets. And it was really incredible to see
the ways in which some agencies that you might not think of as sort of natural partners,
like FSA and NRCS, started to think very creatively about -- you know, they are the ones working
directly with the producers on the ground, how can they help the producers understand
this opportunity to take advantage of FNS's program to get EBT equipment into farmers'
markets. So there is a lot of good thinking along those lines that happens in the task
force. Then in addition to the kind of thinking about policy and program work that happens
in the task force, we also have a main activity around communications and outreach. The picture
you see on the slide here is of our website, and it's really a portal into the Department
for stakeholders involved in local and regional foods who may not be familiar with USDA and
may not necessarily know where to go. So we really try to give them an entry point and
to sort of harness their excitement and energy and funnel it into the right resources.In
terms of how these tools can support FNS, the website, our blog, other communication
tools are really great ways of highlighting the success stories that you all are seeing,
results of your research. We get anywhere from 50,000 to 70,000 hits to the site every
month -- so again, very popular, lots of interest, but many times from folks who don't necessarily
know where to go at USDA. So to the extent we can harness that and funnel it into the
right places, that's really our goal. So I do want you to please consider it as a resource
and as a way to support and highlight all of the work that you're doing. We can talk
a little bit more later about kind of how to do that. And then finally, Know Your Farmer
is the mechanism that we use to track what's happening across the Department to further
the Secretary's goals. I report, as I mentioned, to the Secretary on our progress every month;
and I also report to the White House each month. Every agency reports to me, and Matt
Benson is our stalwart representative for compiling the monthly reports for FNS every
month. I know that he reaches out very broadly across the agency for information, but we
can talk a little bit more about how we might be able to get even more of that because,
again, I want to be a resource. I want to help highlight everything that's taking place
across the agency and make sure that's getting out to the levels to see what's going on.
I quickly wanted to show you a couple of the areas of focus that the initiative has honed
in on over the last four years just to, again, kind of give you a sense of the various places
where FNS might fit into the broader initiative. So we have subcommittees or ad hoc working
groups devoted to a bunch of different topics -- everything from research and data to specific
areas like infrastructure and food safety. There are lots of places where this work intersects
with FNS. Obviously, there are really clear connections -- like Farm to School or even
EBT and farmers' markets -- but I think we can all agree that there are other opportunities
as well that we can hopefully bring some of that at the end of this. We also have a Field
Outreach Subcommittee that's really devoted to building capacity among USDA leadership
and field employees to be able to understand this stuff and to work more effectively with
stakeholders who are engaged in this work. And it's great to hear Alan's voice on the
phone because I am doing a webinar for some of his stakeholders in Chicago next week.
Again, I want to offer myself up as a resource in that way. I do webinars all the time. I
just did RD state directors last week. But I'm always looking for opportunities. If you
can feel like your staff can use some of this information, want to get up to speed on things,
I'm always happy to do that. So, again, please consider it a resource. This I just wanted
to follow up on a point that I've been making, which is that there are a lot of ways that
Know Your Farmer can help other agencies within the Department help support FNS's mission.
So whether it's the work that we're doing with NRCS around seasonal high tunnels, which
are helping to extend the growing season for fresh produce, particularly in urban areas
actually, this is a way, part of that supply team, to help get healthy food into places
that don't have it; whether it's the work that we do with FSA to help diversify fruit
and vegetable producers and other smaller producers -- a lot of them around the periphery
of cities have stable businesses, but then finance their operations as well as build
cold storage facilities for some of those products so they can store them and then get
them to the communities. We're doing a lot of work with rural development and AMS on
infrastructure, like food hubs and mobile markets, and those creative ways that we can
try to get that healthy food into communities that need it. So this is another example of
some of the ways that I think making those connections between agencies can really help
bolster the great work that you guys are doing. All right, so really quickly, I'm going to
close by quickly running through some of the resources that we have that I hope can be
helpful to all the work that you're doing, particularly out in the regions. We do, as
I mentioned, have our website which is this sort of portal into the Department. We have
a new -- well, now it's been up for about a year, but we've got a communications tool
called the Compass, which is really a guide to the USDA programs that support local and
regional foods, including a lot from FNS. And then we have a map where we looked across
the Department and then tried to map investments that we've made in communities related to
local/regional food systems since 2009; and I'll talk more about that in a second. On
our website, we have a Grants and Loans page -- again, this portal idea. So we looked across
the Department; we tried to figure out which programs in different agencies were supporting
local/regional foods; and we put them all in one place. If you click on the links -- this
example is the Farm to School Grants Program -- it gives you an easy to understand description
of the program and a place to get more information and an example of how someone's used that
program for local/regional foods. And then it links you directly to the Farm to School
website. So with people who aren't familiar with us, this is the way they get into the
right spot. The Compass map, as I mentioned, has USDA investments since 2009. It also has
what we call "context data" that is gathered by USDA agencies -- so the locations of farmers'
markets, locations of food hubs, meat processing facilities, other things that can help people
kind of understand the assets they have in their community to further their goals. And
then just last year, we added some projects from other Federal departments as well. So
this is a way for all of us to understand, even if USDA doesn't have the resources to
support a particular project, this is a place to be able to send people to understand a
little bit more of what the Federal Government in general has to offer. And this is just
an example of how the map can be used by our staff or by the stakeholders that we work
with. You can search the map for key words. So say someone has come into your office and
is looking for something that maybe your agency can't offer. That's not the case in terms
of what I showed on the slide, which is Farm to School. But say someone wants into your
office and says, "You know, a really important component of making a Farm to School Program
work is having adequate cold storage so that we can store those fruits and vegetables before
they go to the school." That may not be something that FNS can actually support; maybe we do
that through Farm to School Grants, but those are not always available.
You can search the map for cold storage; and you will find that AMS specialty crop block
grants, FSA farm storage facility loans, and some of our RD programs may have opportunities
there. So you can actually send that stakeholder to this resource. Even if you don't know anything
about those programs, this is the way for them to find a starting point and go from
there. So we're really excited about this tool; and it's updated with new data about
twice a year, so it's fairly current. I don't know we have all the FY13 data in there yet,
but we've got all the FY12. So I'm going to close it there and turn it back over to Deborah
to open it up for some discussion. But I'll just close by saying that I really think of
the Know Your Farmer initiative as an amplifier for really great work that's already taking
place across the Department, and also a support to help you all think about ways that you
can use this tool of a local and regional food system to further the goals of your agency.
And so with that, I think we can start thinking about ways that we can do more of that together.
Thank you, Elanor. I'm just making a note because I would love to facilitate a conversation
on those two fronts -- one about the amplification function, and then the other about supporting
the on the ground work. But before we kind of create that dichotomy in our conversation,
I wonder if there are just questions or thoughts or reactions for Elanor? Rich, please, yes.
We're going to have Rich lead, and then I'm going to go to the folks on the phone. I'm
going to ask the Mid-Atlantic and the West, and I know the Midwest is with us. So if you
guys ready your questions, I'll get to you next. So I was interested to -- first, great
presentation, thank you. I wasn't aware of all of the different linkage resources that
are out on the websites. That's a really valuable resource. If you could talk a little more
about how you see the sort of urban agriculture piece of Know Your Farmer -- so the hoop houses
piece is one part of that. When I think of that in the Farm to School context, I think
about kind of producers who are primarily in sort of the existing traditional areas
and then aggregating and then making those linkages. They're local, but they're still
sort of -- they're not -- not like literally down the block. Right. Whereas I know that
when you were talking about the hoop houses, I just met an assaying gentleman the other
day, Bob Grant -- I don't know if you're familiar with him. I don't think so. He's worked on
a lot of different progressive causes for a long time. But the project he was talking
about was a kind of an urban era culture. I think he's trying to privately finance this
thing; he's not looking for money from us or anything. But he's talking about sort of
an integrated urban farm module that he's trying to create. And it's AERO culture -- so
there's actually not even any soil spritzing nutrients onto stuff. So I'm curious about
that kind of concept -- the part of it that's relocating producers so that they're really
coming to the consumers and how Know Your Farmer—Yeah, it's a really good question.
And I think it's part of the transition that we're seeing or the evolution that we're seeing
in agriculture in general -- that there's a lot of different locations and sort of new
ideas that are cropping us as we try to meet needs. Know Your Farmer really doesn't have
an exclusive focus or I would say even a primary focus on urban. And so a lot of what we are
doing is making those connections between rural communities that are close enough to
cities that they can serve that market and the cities themselves. That's what I was trying
to say, yes. But that said, we get a lot of inquiries -- and I'm sure you guys do too
here at FNS -- from people who are based in cities coming in and saying, "Healthy food
access is a huge priority for us. People are really interested in growing more of our own
food and making it available to the community. What do you guys have to offer?" And although
USDA certainly doesn't have an emphasis in a lot of our grant programs on urban, there
are programs that can support that. And so one of the things we try to do through Know
Your Farmer is to pull all of that information together into one place. So on the website,
we actually do have a Fact Sheet on urban agriculture resources through USDA. It talks
about Farm to School; it talks about a lot of the AMS programs which are available in
urban areas. There's actually even one rural development program that you can get as an
urban producer. Urban rural development? Yep -- (crosstalk). And then the high tunnels
which are -- I mean, NRCS since they that launched that program at the beginning of
2010 has funded over 11,000 high tunnels around the country. Many of them are in rural places,
but there are places where they've done a lot of work in urban areas. Cleveland is one
example. They actually put 30 high tunnels on agricultural plots in Cleveland. And that
was part of a community food security strategy. So there's a lot of interesting stuff going
on that we might not know about. But what we try to do is pull that into one place so
that when you get those questions, you've got a packet that you can hand them and say,
"We actually do do some of this stuff." That's great because I think that part of what may
be of interest going forward to us -- I know it's of interest to the Administrator in particular
-- is making more of these linkages, not only between producers and consumers but also to
link in low-income folks who might be participating in our program. So this represents potentially
economic opportunities for them. Definitely. That's great. That's a great question. Pat,
I have a specific thought about how the Mid-Atlantic ties in; but I'm curious if there are any
questions from the folks in the Mid-Atlantic. Well, I would just echo what Rich had said.
I really appreciated the presentation, and I wasn't really aware of so many of the resources
which kind of all fit together, which is really great for us to be able to share out with
our partners. As you know, our Farm to School Coordinator is coming onboard February 3rd.
So I also appreciate the offer to be a resource, Elanor; and I'll make sure that Keegan when
she comes onboard reaches out to you and to Deborah. Deborah I know knows her well -- to
really, again, just kind of make that connection. So I'm not sure what your question might be,
Deborah; but I guess I would say I really support the approach as we're talking around
food systems. And it's really one of the things we're working more closely through our (inaudible)
in the region, particularly in New Jersey. And then, as you know, we've been reaching
out a lot with our sister agencies, well, whether it's through Strike Force -- but again,
trying to tie in all farm/farmer-related activities. And I am just sending off to you, to Audrey,
and to others a video that we did that kind of summarizes a lot of the success stories
from the conference that we hosted in Puerto Rico which was with -- I guess there were
seven USDA agencies involved. And we refer to it as the Market Expansion Conference,
but it was bringing together -- I think we had about 300 farmers in Puerto Rico and collectively,
the USDA agencies talking to them about opportunities to promote agriculture and how that promotion
of agriculture translates into better variety and healthier choices on the school lunch
tray. So we have some success stories from that, so we'll be sure to make sure, Elanor,
you also get a copy. Great, and that, Pat, was exactly the thought I had that related
to you; and I was going to use it when I segued into amplification strategies because that
would be a perfect project to amplify. So I'm going to circle back to that. I'm just
curious -- Alan from the Midwest or our team in the Western Regional Office, do you have
any clarifying questions or thoughts for Elanor that you'd like to share? Yeah, I've got one;
this is Alan. At one of our Good Greens meetings recently, somebody asked that because we talk
about the hoop house funding. We've had people present on that before, and of course a lot
of urban farmers are interested in that. And someone made a suggestion that when those
grants go out, wouldn't it be a logical fit for them to connect somehow with farmers'
markets in the area. And I don't know if that's an easy thing to do or who might do that.
We're going to try to do that regionally and figure that out by reaching out to NRCS. We
have contacts in a couple of our states. But I thought the idea was really good. The topic
that we were discussing was winter markets because the number of those has grown. And
the number of those that are SNAP-authorized has grown so that people can get fresh produce/local
produce year around. But if we're out there providing funds for hoop houses but those
farms don't understand or don't realize that there's an opportunity in their area to sell
at winter markets, then they may be struggling more than they need to. So I'd just like to
see if you have any thoughts or suggestions in that area. Yeah, thanks, Alan. I think
that's a great example of ways in which this inner agency coordination can really help
sort of pull the puzzle pieces together because we've got NRCS working on the hoop houses;
we have AMS that actually surveys and publishes lists of all of the winter farmers' markets
that's updated every year; and then we've got you sort of playing a role to connect
the dots there where you can help NRCS access those resources so that they can share it
with the producers who are doing the high tunnels. So, yeah, I think that's a great
idea. I do think it's something that's going to be much more effective if it happens at
the regional or local level. And so we're doing actually training for all of the field-based
agencies that are co-located at NRCS, RD and FSA about how that inner agency coordination
can work a little bit better to support producers and businesses engaged in local foods. But
that's certainly something that we've been thinking about wanting to make sure -- and
actually, we've mentioned this in the training -- letting them know about the FNS regional
offices and doing what we can to try to strengthen the connections there. So it sounds like you're
already making that happening. Okay, so if we made an ask of our other NRCS offices in
the other states that we don't have a relationship with yet and ask, say, if they're providing
these grants if they could let us know. And then we can have one of our interns research
via the web or the USDA site where the local farmers' markets are and try to make that
connection. So that sounds like the best approach to do that? Well, my only caution is that
NCRS has some restrictions on what personal identification information they can release,
I think even to other Federal folks. And for that reason on our map we don't have specific
locations of high tunnels; we just have density of high tunnels by zip code. So you may run
into a challenge there, but I think at the very least what you could do is tell NRCS
that this is something that you're interested in, let them know that winter farmers' markets
are an opportunity for those producers and that there's another part of USDA that's tracking
those and that understands sort of where they are geographically, and then maybe provide
them with a list that the intern can put together of the locations in their state so that they
can then in turn get that out to the high tunnel producers. Okay, great, that will work.
I had one other question. I didn't realize that there were urban ag tools on the Know
Your Farmer site. And I think I'm on the page, but I want to make sure because a lot of people
have asked for these tools. Is it under urban agriculture? The first item is a Guide to
Urban Farming in New York State? No, if you go to the Grants and Loans page from the KYS
home page -- that list of grants and loans that I was talking about -- at the very bottom
there is a link to a memo on urban agriculture. And I should mention that is actually somewhat
old, and so we're in the middle right now of updating it. So there should be a new version
on there in the next month or so. But that will be a place to start. Great, thank you.
Sure, thank you. Do we have any thoughts or comments from our team from the West? You
don't have to have any, but I just want to make sure you had an opportunity. Hi, Deborah.
This is Marisa and we actually have, I think, a couple of staff calling in from other offices
so they may have questions as well. This is kind of a quick resource question. We're looking
this year at exploring avenues for promoting and supporting farm to institutions in some
of our non-school programs -- TFAP, WIC, FDPIR, and so forth. And so I'm curious; is there
a hub where some of the best practices and model programs are centralized that we could
look at to help us get started? Is that something that's available on the Compass tool or site?
Can you repeat that? I didn't quite -- I'll summarize it first. If we were to bring local
and regional at least food sourcing capabilities into some of the other FNS programs apart
from the school meal programs -- are there resources and tools that would be available
either for us or for the (inaudible) that we work with that would do that?. And I'm
smiling only because we had a Farm to School management team this morning. And I turned
to Cindy and I said, "Cindy, what is that best practices share site called that we created?"
And she said, "It's called the Best Practices Share Site." And, Marisa, the truth is we
within FNS have created a Best Practices Share Site that no one uses -- or that very few
people use or are aware of. Yeah, I was not aware of it. Elanor is not aware, and I don't
know that KYF has or that Know Your Farmer has. So sadly, I think that we're our own
resource. Is there something like that though on the Best Practices Share Site? Is their
content like what Marisa was asking about? Theoretically there could be content like
what Marisa is asking about. I am one of those who don't use it, so I can't tell you what's
there. This is Eileen. Eileen knows! Eileen would know! The Best Practices Share Site
was set up when the new meal pattern came out in in order to assist schools in sharing
how they were implementing the meal pattern. Okay. So right now it is primarily aimed at
lowering sodium or menus that meet the meal pattern or how they're implementing breakfast
-- those kinds of things. We do that through the National Agricultural Library's Food and
Nutrition Information Center. And they are always very willing to help us connect with
states and schools and all of our audiences. There you go. So this is an opportunity, I
think, both for us in FNS and the KYF community more broadly to do a little bit of this. So
whether you get something where you guys have already developed that content and it's just
living elsewhere or if it's something that could be developed. We can also -- we have
national and library staff on our task force for Know Your Farmer, and they've done lit
reviews for us before. We could go out and see if academic studies have been done looking
at this kind of thing. But what I'd love to do would be to make all of that information
available on the Resources Page of Know Your Farmer, in addition to wherever FNS would
like to host it, so that we can have it available and then send people into FNS to learn more.Yes,
so if you haven't gone to the Healthy Meals Resources System, type that in and then go
see what it looks like. Great, thanks, Eileen. Lots of resources there. Great. I might, just
given the time, I want to segue a little bit into a conversation in the category of amplification
because I want to make sure that with the folks that are in the room we have a chance
to be explicit about how FNS activities are currently being reported within the KYF framework.
Stacey knows this well because she's intimately involved. But we are tasked with reporting
into the KYF system, the Know Your Farmer system, FNS activities that are relevant on
a monthly basis -- monthly, right? So we do that monthly and do the Secretary's report
quarterly? I do the Secretary's report every month. I also now, starting this year, am
also doing a White House report. Sure, and you're probably doing a Dashboard report.
And the Dashboard report as well. We know the Dashboard reports well. So as a member
of the Know Your Farmer management team, one of the things that I was tasked with was making
sure that FNS activities were duly reported in. Well, actually in fact, the initial request
came to all of the agencies from Deputy Secretary Merrigan at the time -- probably 18 months
ago. And they went basically to the administrators. And Audrey said, "Deborah, I know you're really
involved in this. Can you make sure that these reports are getting in, in a timely fashion?"
And times have changed and our team has grown. At this point, Matt Benson is responsible
for reaching out to all the different divisions and asking, "What do you have this month that
might be relevant?" And just to be real explicit, sometimes we get stuff back and sometimes
we don't. And sometimes we get stuff back because there's stuff to be reported, and
I don't necessarily always assume that when we don't get something back it's because there's
nothing to report. Does that make sense? When we get nothing back, I say, "Matt, all the
same folks that you're asking for information, they're reporting through another vehicle
every Friday when we've got our Division reports that come out every Friday." So we're scouring
the Division reports as well to look for things that we think might be relevant to Know Your
Farmer. And we're doing the same thing with the regions. So all the regions are reporting
that or Connie comes around. So we're scouring the regional reports. And then also there's
Elanor. And then Elanor picks and chooses, and she decides what she thinks the Secretary
might be interested in. And then it all gets channeled up to the Secretary. And then every
now and then, I get handwritten notes back from the Secretary on things of mine -- Farm
to School related things -- that got to him via Elanor. And I think, "Where in the world?
Oh, right, right, Know Your Farmer." And so for the regional offices, we've had an open
question as to whether or not when Matt sends out his request to Division directors within
the National Office context, whether it might also be useful to send those out to the regions;
or whether you would encourage us to continue scouring your reports. And, Pat, one of the
things that came up for me literally today when I got your e-mail about the fantastic
you all had done in Puerto Rico and that brilliant video, which I watched; I laughed; I cried.
And I thought, "This is Know Your Farmer work at its best. This is FNS leading a market
development project in one of our states that's all about food access in schools, and they're
partnering with all these different USDA agencies; and I bet it was never in a single report."
And if I can just jump in quickly to sort of give some context to the report, in addition
to just giving information to the Secretary -- and sometimes I hear back from him and
sometimes I don't -- but we also use that information to figure out ways that we can
amplify everything that you guys are doing. So there may be opportunities for a blog on
some things that we can help support. There may be opportunities, for example with the
Puerto Rico one, on our Compass page we have case studies that we profile. We can add that
as a case study. We ask a question in the Monthly Report as if there are upcoming talks
or events that you would like to mention Know Your Farmer and can we provide any materials
or talking points for you. So it's not just you giving us stuff that then goes into the
void. It's also a feedback link so that we can support you better -- so just for what
it's worth. So I was just curious -- Diane and Rich and folks that understand our reporting
mechanisms -- do you have any thoughts or reactions? Are you seeing these requests come
out? Are you aware? I actually try to respond personally. Great. I have to say that I'm
often chagrined when I send them back because we're reporting on it, one of our reports
for example. And because of the nature of the departmental clearance process, I tend
to report the same thing again and again, which is we're still waiting for (inaudible).But
for me that works quite effectively. I know our reports are a little thin -- or what we
send to you might be a little thin because our activities in the states are -- even though
we collaborate on a bunch of stuff. Like Sally, who's on our team, is always working on the
products that kind of coming right out of the office are -- I mean, the one thing I
want to make sure of is that for every project you have that everybody knows who's sort of
on point to report it so that you don't end up having that thing -- like you were going
to do it, I thought you were going to do it. We do have that in other cases—No we don't.
Where there are things that are weekly reported things -- were you going to do the thing on
the (inaudible) or am I doing tha,t or whatever. So that's just one observation. Go ahead,
Pat. I was just going to say, I think from my perspective in terms of the reporting channels,
it probably would be easiest, if you will, for the regions to use the Weekly Report as
the vehicle for communicating what's happening around Know Your Farmer and Farm to School.
But maybe what we could do is suggest to Connie, who kind of pulls that altogether, that maybe
we want to have another category because she kind of does it by categories, and maybe put
Know Your Farmer or Farm to School as a category because we were submitting articles around
the conference in Puerto Rico -- both in the planning and in the after of that. So maybe
it just got kind of lost in some of the other pieces.
Yeah, and I have to say, when I saw the video and saw your e-mail, my first assumption was
we missed it -- that we had every opportunity to find it, that it was in those reports but
we just missed it. But I think you're right. If we elevated the ask quickly and easily
with a category and what you're submitting into Connie's report, I think that would get
us pretty far. Right and then as opposed to another channel or reporting. Right, thank
you. Diane? You're making the request not directly to me. So you're going to a Division
instead of an organization. So the only thing that I could suggest is that if you included
the SNAP leadership in those active weeks where you don't get anything from us but we
probably have done something, that would be something that we could be sensitive to and
make sure that we get the same. I'm not suggesting that there's not stuff in the Weekly. You're
probably finding most of our stuff in the Weekly. But if you're directing it to Laura
Pastor, which is what I suspect -- who are you asking this now?
Well, Christina had held District responsibilities, so Christina had—Christina was doing it?
Yes. So that means you may or may not be missing Food Safety, which as you know, (inaudible)
university is a big area for us. And I have to say, sorry, part of my thought in trying
to get as many people as possible to this meeting was to elevate it to that Administrator
and Deputy level to say we may have missed a step in making sure everybody was even aware
I think there are two things going on. We need to make sure at the administrator level
you all know and are working with us to make sure that the right staff are being contacted,
and we need a little bit of help I think helping people see their work as Know Your Farmer
work. It's a framing issue as much as it's a reporting issue. So, Matt, you and I can
work out who the distribution work goes to; and we won't spend too much time here on that.
But I just wanted to elevate it for folks. We can continue to talk about it at the SCC
level; we can talk about it at the Administrator's level. But we caught a few folks now so that
next time it comes up, it won't be new or unusual. Would you typically want with Bert
[Casterol] all work to get and you get copies, or would you want to send it out? I send it
out to Jay and Catherine. I would like to have it come in and out of my office. Okay,
great. And that's the (inaudible) that we've kind of lost on actually everything here.
We're doing a lot of news releases and responses to reporters and responses to special requests.
And there's not a quality control aspect if you're not coming in and out of the Deputy's
Office. The other thing I wanted to highlight from what Deborah was saying also is when
Matt reaches out and he says it to all of your offices, when he puts the deadline on
there, please make sure you adhere to the deadline only because what happens is Elanor
will wait and she will ping me and she'll say, "Stacey, we're waiting on the FNS Know
Your Farmer report." And then what happens at that point is Deborah—(crosstalk) So
at some point to be honest -- we've got things working, but at some point when you miss the
deadline, Elanor is watching. She's waiting. Sometimes I'll respond, "Hey, give us a day
or two." And then of course if Deborah and I like huddle over e-mail or over the phone
or something, and then she'll say, "Oh, sorry," or if I know that she's out of town or something
so I'm able to say, "Elanor, we're working on it. We'll get it." Or when this last report
then I start pinging other people to make it happen. And I understand quality control,
but if we're going to send to you after you have so much on your plate that you don't
want to designate somebody, just understand that we really do need it to move through
Elanor. I love your e-mails, but I hate (inaudible).And you guys were early this month. And the reason
the Communication shop. What? Come on now. I'm sitting in this meeting and thinking,
it's not coming? It will be coming. All right, so I know we may not have addressed all the
questions or thoughts on the phone. Are there other things? We have about five minutes.
I want to end on time and respect people's time and thank you for coming. Are there other
thoughts? I know Eileen and National Office folks are on the line. Have we said everything
that needs to be said for today? Thanks for coming. Thank you. And again, I'm only tapping
into it; so let me know. The session has been recorded. This meeting has been recorded?
If you had dialed in, the phone operator would have told you that. Our thought was some regions
won't be able to participate. And so the first 30 minutes have been recorded so if they want
to watch the webinar and understand a little bit more about Know Your Farmer, we can help
them do that. And if you want to actually host a Brown Bag with your staff and watch
Elanor's 30 minutes with your staff to help them understand why you're asking them for
the report, you'll be able to do that because we recorded the webinar. That's fantastic.
My apologies for not making that clear to people who were sitting in the room. I should
have signed a disclaimer before I walked in. That's all I'm asking for. For the folks on
the phone, I think you would have jumped in if you had something. Yeah, no more from here
but thank you again. Yeah, thanks, everybody.