Advocating Together for Strong Food Policies in Juneau

By Robbi Mixon, Executive Director, and Rachel Lord, Advocacy and Policy Director, AFPC

The second week of February is our statewide ‘Food Security Week.’ Over the course of five days, Alaskans from all corners of the state fly into Juneau with a shared vision of stronger food systems for our state. 

Three big issues took center stage this year: child nutrition (check out our policy briefs on HB 12 – free school meals, and SB 13 – summer EBT), the creation of a Department of Agriculture (read our policy brief here), and agriculture leasing of state lands. With AFPC, we visited legislative offices to meet with staff, Senators, and Representatives with a story that highlighted the interconnectedness and opportunities before us as a state. 

AFPC began with an overview of our connection and focus on a cross-sector approach to strengthening food security in Alaska. Claire Marshalek, Executive Director of the Alaska Farmers Market Association, shared the work of AFMA, highlighting the food access programs they support including SNAP matching, WIC and SNAP at markets, and the Local Food Purchase Agreement program. Through LFPA, this fall they were able to buy a cow from Homer that was butchered and sent at no cost to Iliamna School. Iliamna is part of the Lake and Peninsula School District, where they have left the National School Lunch Program because they couldn’t afford it. Now the community in Iliamna and Newhalen are fundraising for food for their 93 school kids. Evelynn Trefon, a parent from Newhalen and a member of the Newhalen Local School Advisory Committee, joined us to speak to the impact of the AFMA support. With the cow now in their freezers, they have meat for school lunches through the rest of the semester. She and Claire also spoke to the importance of increasing food production in Alaska, so our kids and communities can have access to better, fresher, and locally grown foods. Emily Garrity, owner/operator of Twitter Creek Gardens, a nine-acre micro-farm located just outside of Homer, then spoke to her frustrating (and so far unsuccessful) efforts over the past three years to secure a lease of state lands to expand her produce farm in the Homer-area. We discussed the work underway, alongside the Alaska Farm Bureau, to bring forward a bill to the legislature that can streamline the process of leasing state lands for agricultural production. We also supported the creation of a Department of Agriculture to strengthen the statewide leadership necessary to truly advance Alaska’s agricultural industry.