PGH Project to Help Whom Find Local Food?
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports today that Produce Grown Here (aka the PGH project) is going to begin a push to get more local foods into restaurants and consumers by focusing its efforts on Eat ‘N Park and Giant Eagle. Providing assistance to these two corporations in finding food seems akin to offering the Red Sox and the Yankees assistance in finding baseball prospects.
I, of course, fully support the idea behind the PGH Project: that everyone ought to be using as much locally-grown produce as possible. On the other hand, it seems to me that targeting their efforts at the big boys of the local food chain doesn’t make all that much sense. After all, both Eat ‘N park and Giant Eagle have massive amounts of resources at their disposal. Eat ‘N Park already has a Director of Sourcing and Sustainability on staff and Giant Eagle has a vertically integrated food supply chain and handles all of its own warehousing and distribution. Surely these corporations could use some of their muscle to get local foods without having a nonprofit give them assistance?
Why not target smaller operations that don’t have as many resources behind them? Really, I want to know. Anyone out there associated with this effort? I’d love to hear your reasoning.
I’d also love to see you throw a bone to the little guys.
July 7th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Fillippelli the Cook has some answers to some of these questions here.