What We Do
The Viability Initiative
Over the last three years, the New Hampshire Food Alliance has been hard at work gathering data, convening stakeholders, and crafting a unique strategy that will help improve the NH food system through the collective action of our network. This planning phase has been instrumental in building our network capacity and for gaining deep understanding of the complexity of our food system.
We are now poised to enter the next phase of our work with our first initiative of the network: the farm, fish and food enterprise viability initiative. The Viability Initiative is uniquely New Hampshire in its approach and was informed through countless conversations and feedback from our network partners throughout the Granite State. We are getting excited to share it with our network and beyond.
Why a farm, fish and food enterprise viability initiative?
Farmers have been struggling in New Hampshire; they contend with financial hardship, unruly regulations, consumers who don’t understand the value of the foods they produce and barriers to entry for institutional markets.
The goal of the New Hampshire Food Alliance is to address these very issues through the Viability Initiative. Our network recognizes that long-term economic profitability is at the heart and root of a sustainable food system here in the Granite State.
We also recognize that farmers can’t do it alone and that we can’t approach viability solely from an economic perspective if we expect to have long-lasting change within our food system.
That is why we are applying our food system perspective and the collective expertise, knowledge and action of our network to help improve the viability of our food producers and processors within New Hampshire.
We recognize that the work of our network is continually evolving and we will be adapting the Viability Initiative over time to suit the needs of our network and food producers as we learn more and delve into this work.
We know there is a lot of work to be done, so we’ll be looking to our network partners to help us with this task! Stay tuned for more information!