The Iowa State University Community Design Lab (CDL) is working on the development of an Agricultural Urbanism Toolkit that supports rural and urban communities in their efforts to design and develop local food production through a Leopold Center, Marketing and Food Systems Initiative grant. The first year, CDL is working with 3 communities of different scales and different priorities: Cedar Rapids, Cresco, and Des Moines. In addition, CDL is developing a booklet of tools- best management practices- for varied scales of food system implementation.
CDL will be offering presentations in the fall to inform the public about the existing program of the toolkit as well as future programming. We invite all agriculture, public health, and community professionals to participate in these presentations; each will be a part of larger conferences in the Des Moines metro area. Our goal for the presentations is to inform local leaders and educators about the toolkit and ways it can benefit your community, or communities you work with. Iowa Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) awarded CDL a mini-grant to offer travel scholarships to those that are interested in attending presentation (Funding is limited so scholarships will be offered on a first-come, first serve basis.) Following the presentations, CDL will also be offering a webinar to bring all participants together.
The first presentation will be at the Hunger Summit on October 14, 2014, at the Downtown Marriott in Des Moines. The Summit is free to attend, but pre-registration required at: http://www.worldfoodprize.org/en/events/iowa_hunger_summit/
For more information about this effort, visit the Community Design Lab's website.
Submitted by UA member Courtney Long.