Northwoods Food Project

The Northwoods Food Project was founded to support the production of fresh local food. 

Why NWFP?

Cook County, MN, is a food desert that is geographically remote and precariously isolated with just one route in and out. With a very short growing season and challenging soils, the limited farmers and food producers in the county face exceptional challenges to provide the community with reliable access to fresh and healthy food. Because food insecurity is growing as the cost of living increases, especially for working families and elders, support for access to local healthy foods is especially critical.

The Northwoods Food Project builds food resilience in several ways: We help support local farmers and food producers, we make healthy local food available through the weekly farmers' market, we help small start-up food businesses sustain and grow, and we offer a community food equipment lending library to increase access to locally produced fresh, healthy food.

What we can do with your help

We have work to do to achieve food security. With your help, we can provide educational programs for community members to grow and preserve more local food, to help find and develop potential new farmers and food producers, and expand the lending library equipment to include more processing and shared farming equipment.

Food Project Mission:

The Northwoods Food Project connects, grows, and supports a sustainable local food system in Cook County, Minnesota from farmer to fork

Food Project Vision:

A sustainable local food system in Cook County where:

Farmers and food producers can access land, knowledge, skills, and support to provide food locally

All families and community members can find, afford, cook, and eat local food

This organization exists to:

• support and conduct non-partisan agricultural research, education, and informational activities to increase public awareness of food sustainability and local production within Cook County, MN.  
• increase food health and safety
• increase food self-reliance
• increase agricultural economic viability within Cook County

We do this by:

• Co-sponsoring our local farmer's market
• Partnering with Cook County, Sawtooth Mountain Clinic, and SHIP to provide opportunity for customers to use supplemental nutrition programs (SNAP, WIC, "Together We Grow," and the "Power Of Produce") at the farmer's market
• Participating in the area Food Systems Network to increase cross-organization communication and support
• Working to develop a county-wide food growing  system
• Providing educational resources to local food growers 
• Providing educational links between food growers and county resources via lending library, media, classes, etc.
• Helping to develop, support, and maintain community garden sites
• Providing refrigeration space for local growers to store the food they produces.
• Hosting periodic in-person social/educational gatherings to share food, information, and resources

For more information, feel free to email us at:  NWFoodProject@gmail.com