What if we create a ‘Community Food Center’ in DeKalb County?
What if we use local food production, processing, and distribution as an engine for economic and personal development?
What if we used food as a way to not only feed people but also train and employ people? Use food for job readiness?
The DeKalb County Community Food Center drawing on our agricultural heritage is an initiative that solves several problems. It addresses the issues of lack of access to fresh healthy food options. It provides employment and training. It boosts economic development. It increases the health and well-being of many residents of DeKalb County. It fosters hope and a path forward for many youth in DeKalb County who are growing up without seeing many options for themselves.
The Food and Education Center is conceived as both a local resource and a regional attraction. By combining a grocery store, restaurant, shared-use community kitchen incubator, food hub, greenhouses and urban farm, the Center will be able to offer training experiences across the entire food-systems spectrum. Simultaneously, the Center will provide an intrinsically beautiful, soothing, and productive greenspace within which restaurant goers, students, shoppers, employees, and local residents can mingle, learn, enjoy a meal, or just relax. In short, the Center will be more than a place. It will be a destination.
If we can conceive it, we can create it.
I’m Dan Kenney and this is my perspective.
