Food for thought

RONAN — What’s not to like about retaining millions of dollars in western Montana while simultaneously allowing individuals and businesses to prosper?

Oh, and what if a byproduct of this was that local schools, specifically students, benefited as well?

Behind this idea is the Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center (MMFEC), located in Ronan. The MMFEC is one of four shared-use processing facilities in Montana that work with local producers and entrepreneurs to help Montana thrive in several aspects of food product and business.

“Food business has a lot of different layers and it really depends on the food product that you’re making,” Jan Tusick, program director for the MMFEC, said at a recent tour of the facility.

The MMFEC is a multi-faceted operation, which helps local entrepreneurs in several aspects, ranging from business plans, labels and licensing requirements to providing a facility for those individuals to make barbecue sauce or smoke meat and everything in between.

The Cooperative Development Center, a branch of the MMFEC, helped start Montana Growers Cooperative, spanning from the north Flathead Lake area down to the Bitterroot, to help individual businesses come together to sell into wholesale markets.

“This year, they’re projecting over a half a million dollars in the sales of fruits, vegetables and other products,” Karl Sutton, program manager for the CDC, said.

Last spring, a five-county study was conducted to analyze the importance of agriculture in the region. What turned up was that area communities could retain roughly $66 million if 15 percent of food could be procured directly from local producers.

“This is why we’re doing this work,” Sutton said. “There’s real money leaving our communities every day that we export food and import it. It’s not just going to be the producers that are going to benefit. It’s going to create new industry sectors: packaging, cardboard-box makers, processors.”

Another vital part of the food enterprise center is their work with area schools. Co-ops such as the aforementioned Montana Growers Cooperative, supply the food processing facility with raw items, which are then used in school food programs. Polson schools, with the backing of superintendent David Whitesell, are making headway in implementing a farm-to-school program to bring Montana-grown products into Montana schools. The program’s three focuses are to improve nutrition education in schools, develop school gardens and emphasize local procurement.

In fact, October is National Farm-to-School Month. On the 24th, Polson, Ronan and St. Ignatius schools will be hosting a Montana-made meal, featuring local beef, processed by the MMFEC, as well as apples and carrots from the area. They will also be taste testing lentil burgers, with ingredients such as flaxseed, oats and onions, all Montana grown.

According to Lindsay Howard, AmeriCorps VISTA, the farm-to-school program is vital for numerous reasons.

“Some of the wonderful benefits of farm-to-school are helping the local economy, increasing health and nutrition for students, increasing awareness of how to grow food and cook with whole ingredients and it’s actually better for the environment,” Howard said.

The centers and cooperatives in the region constitute an operation with many contributing parts, but those parts are working together to create a healthier, smarter and more profitable Montana, giving the area an appetizing future.