Farmers, restaurants say loss of federal funds won’t hurt local food

PALMER — The program that reimbursed Alaska restaurants for using locally grown products may be coming to an end, but that won’t stop the circulation of the iconic blue and yellow sticker.

According to Jacquelyn Schade with the Alaska Division of Agriculture in Palmer, the Alaska Grown Restaurant Rewards Program was created in 2012 to encourage restaurant owners to purchase of Alaska Grown products. Participants were to be reimbursed 20 percent for buying such products with funding from a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Specialty Crop Block Grant.

In its first fiscal year, Schade said, the program was successful, so DNR decided to continue it. However, as a result of an annual revision of the national grant, reimbursements will no longer be available to Alaskans through the feds.

“This has been coming down the pipeline for about nine months,” Schade said.

And with just $10,000 of the grant left to distribute, it’s only a matter of time before the money runs out.

“Unless we have an alternate source of funding coming up, the program will be put on hold or go away for a while,” Schade said.

She did not anticipate such funding coming to the Division of Agriculture anytime soon, since the division operates on “a pretty tight fiscal budget,” with “no money left for programs.”

“Our projects are pretty much federally funded,” she said.

As it stands, there are 30 establishments statewide that are currently enrolled in the Restaurant Rewards Program, four of which are in the Mat-Su Valley.

One of those is The Flying Squirrel Bakery Café in Talkeetna, owned by Anita Golton, who is a farmer herself.

Golton said by phone Friday that she would continue to buy and use Alaska Grown products in the food she sells at the café.

“To me it’s just something I would be doing anyway and the Restaurant Rewards Program was a bonus,” Golton said.

Golton maintained that the program could have been more successful if given more time to gain momentum in Alaska, and if presented less as a marketing tool for Alaska Grown and more of an opportunity to spread awareness about shopping local.

Now, with the restaurant program on the outs, Golton said the state will just have to get more creative to get more Alaskan products in more commercial circulation.

Deborah Forslin of Golden Farms, who sells her homegrown products primarily at farmer’s markets, said it shouldn’t be too difficult to find new ways to entice locals to buy local.

“Alaskans are good at that. We know how to adapt and improvise,” she said.

For the restaurants and farms already trading Alaska Grown, the end of the federal program comes as neither a surprise nor a “deal breaker” for buying local.

Farmer Carol Kenley, who has sold Alaska Grown produce to local restaurants like Turkey Red in Palmer, said she’s sure restaurants will continue to use local products.

“I think the high-end restaurants are going to keep using Alaska Grown because it’s a better product,” Kenley said.

She said the lack of a reward program might keep restaurants and foodservice vendors who haven’t tried Alaska Grown products from shelling out a little extra cash to buy local on a regular basis, but that’s the way of marketing.

“I just think it's a matter of continuing advertising for Alaska Grown,” Kenley said.

According to the DNR website, Alaska Grown is a program “designed to increase consumer awareness and consumption of Alaska agricultural products.” That effort continues in the Palmer Fred Meyer, Palmer Carrs and Walmart grocery stores (at various levels), as well as at farmers markets, Schade said.

Bistro Red Beet owner and Depot Farm Market board member Sally Koppenberg said selling local products at small venues like markets actually makes more sense for Alaska growers, who often find it difficult to benefit from the rewards program anyway. The system USDA had set up, she said, catered more to bigger businesses purchasing large amounts of a single product from a single source.

“This system might work well in states where there are both very large farmers and a number of large restaurants who purchase locally grown, but it was (in my opinion) set up to fail from the beginning in Alaska,” she wrote in an email Friday. “The bulk of the growers up here are quite small … and scattered. They must sell for top dollar to keep their operations afloat, they sell at farmer’s markets where they can maximize their dollars and benefit from direct retail sales.”

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.