general interest, partner spotlight & events
Looking Back to Look Forward: A year of Growing, Building Trust, and Deepening Connections in the Islands & Remote Areas
By Robbi Mixon, Executive Director, AFPC
This past August, AFPC hosted our Islands and Remote Areas Regional Food Business Center (RFBC) partners in Alaska. Participants traveled from their island homes in the Pacific and the Caribbean to Anchorage, then on to Homer, at the literal end of the road – an experience that gave them firsthand experience of the vastness of our beautiful state. The theme of the gathering, Looking Back to Look Forward, was one of celebration, learning, and collective visioning, following a year of building and planning for our business center. Our week together honored the past while looking towards a more positive and abundant positive future.
Many have asked what Alaska, Hawai’i, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have in common. At the surface, we share high food and transportation costs, limited access to fresh local foods, tremendous logistical hurdles, and histories of colonization, forced assimilation, and resource extraction. What we’ve learned over our first year of the IRA RFBC project is that our similarities are not solely marked by our challenges: we share a resilient spirit. Our communities hold the solutions to improving our food systems but need support- something the collective power of our organizations is striving for.
Throughout the four days of the gathering, we spent time looking back at the first year of the RFBC and strategizing ways to move forward together to provide resources our food and farm businesses in our diverse, unique communities need. Regional presentations showcased place-based efforts to strengthen food systems. In Alaska, trust-building, network weaving, and equitable policy development were emphasized, while USVI reflected on combining food systems development with cultural traditions. Puerto Rico shared its vision of public outreach and collaboration with agricultural leaders. Our fearless IRA RFBC leaders from Hawai’i Good Food Alliance shared practical project administration information and Guam presented about the groundwork they’ve laid for the work ahead.
Collectively, we examined critical questions about leveraging limited resources and creating lasting systemic change through the Regional Food Business Center.
We took the time to visit with local farmers and to learn more about the history of the area, including a powerful cultural exchange with the Seldovia Village Tribe and an ethnobotany tour with Homer’s Pratt Museum. We shared a meal of local food, provided by the Alaska Food Hub and local community members, and more importantly, we all shared stories about our homes. The gathering concluded with a collective sense of family and shared challenges, and the stunning landscape of Homer and Kachemak Bay reminded everyone of their home communities, where life is intimately tied to our relationships with our waters and our lands.
The Islands & Remote Areas Regional Food Business Center Gathering marked an exciting start to the project’s next chapter, seeing where we’ve been and setting a course for where we will go together. We all carry forward hope for sustaining the Rural Food Business Center’s (RFBC) impact by bridging past wisdom with innovative solutions for the future.
