AFPC Welcomes Our Newest Staff Member Regional Food Business Center Co-Director: Colin Peacock
Guest Blog: Colin Peacock, Regional Food Business Center Co-Director
Greetings from Southeast Alaska! Colin Peacock, I am introducing myself as the new Regional Food Business Center Co-Director at AFPC. I am beyond delighted to announce that I have finally joined this dream team to build a more secure local food future together. I wanted to share how my remarkable local food journey brought me here.
My roots are in Tucson, AZ, where a nomadic lifestyle defined my youth, exploring the western states with my family while venturing into Sonora and Baja, Mexico. Summers were spent in the glaciated valleys of Montana, foraging for morels, boletes, and chanterelles, while winters brought us to the Sonoran desert to camp, snorkel, and savor bowls of Menudo with Sonoran Flour tortillas.
I always felt a calling to support local foods and worked at a native plant nursery with Slow Food USA. It eventually led me to graduate from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco to work at farm-to-table restaurants, aligning my passion with the production and cultivation of the foods I cherished.
I did this for a few years before seeking a greater impact on the environment and decided conservation biology would be a better way to help preserve the wild places I so valued. I graduated from Clark University in Massachusetts with a BA in Conservation Biology and a focus on Forest Ecology. From there, I went on to lead Conservation Biology student field programs, taking university students into the wilderness and teaching them college courses while working to conserve such landscapes in the Yukon, British Columbia, Namibia, and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
During this time, I began to develop my photography and fundraising skills for farming, food, and sustainable development nonprofits. This culminated in 2015 when I went to the high planes of Peru to start a company making various superfood products with rural indigenous farmers so they could continue their traditional lifestyle. Quinoa Milk was the main product, leading to further work here in Alaska as I produced an award-winning kelp hot sauce recipe you can get all over the state and beyond!
Maintaining my commitment to local food advocacy, I initiated Southeast Alaska's food hub, the Salt and Soil Marketplace, in 2016. I was active and engaged in membership of the Alaska Farmers Market Network, the Juneau Commission on Sustainability, and various local food working groups, championing initiatives such as community gardens, shared space commercial kitchens, and diverse small food businesses.
You may have seen my pasta, hot sauce, or pasta sauces for sale on Salt & Soil, as I still try to create new products every year as a passion and to help invigorate and keep the local food system alive.
I live in Juneau with my partner Meredith Trainor and dog Ruby in a 113-year-old miner's cabin we purchased last year. We still spend as much time as possible getting out to forage, camp and enjoy the wild, intact community of people and wilderness we are privileged to call home.
It was great connecting with the team and many amazing participants at the Alaska Food & Farm Festival in Anchorage. Looking forward to many follow-ups and updates as we embark on this incredible journey into building Regional Food Business Centers!
