StarkFresh

About the offering

There are several programs that we currently run that advance us towards the goal to create an overarching, integrated solution to the problem of increasing fresh, nutritious food access & consumption in chronically under-served neighborhoods throughout the County. StarkFresh operates nearly 7 acres of farm sites within Canton, Ohio using 100% volunteer labor. On our Teaching Farm, Training Farm, and Cooperative Farms, produce is currently grown for our Mobile Grocery Market. In the past 6 years, this program has been able to provide 367,448 servings of food to 6674 individuals across 75 stops, equating to roughly 65,547 of fresh, affordable food items that were sold. The Mobile Grocery Market travels throughout the county and delivers produce and groceries to senior housing complexes, public housing authority properties, public services centers, permanent supportive housing as well as places that are considered food apartheids where there is little to no access to fresh, healthy food for sale. StarkFresh Mobile Grocery Market stop. Food from the farms also will be sold at our newest endeavor, to build a working model of a nonprofit neighborhood Grocery Store. Mirroring the success of the Mobile Grocery Market model, this brick-and-mortar version of a Grocery Store will be housed within the Food Justice Campus, which contains Shared Commercial Kitchen and Office spaces as well as the Food Incubation Center for small food business startups. Located less than 2 blocks from the County's main bus terminal, where 150,000 people travel through monthly, this store model will create a blueprint for other neighborhood grocery stores in areas that need it most, proving that bigger does not always mean a better solution. An investment in StarkFresh is an investment in obtainable, real-world solutions to deeply-rooted problems. Traditionally, for systematic change to take place, drastically different approaches to problem-solving must be taken. We do this, and we do it better than others, as we are not afraid to think outside the box to look for solutions.

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