TOWN OF NEW MILFORD
Economic Development Office
10 Main Street
New Milford, Connecticut 06776
Telephone (860) 355-5001 • Fax (860) 210-2623
www.newmilfordedc.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: March 18, 2009
Mayor Patricia Murphy of New Milford announced today that the Town of New Milford Economic Development Office has been awarded a grant in the amount of $11,214.00, to conduct a feasibility study on Southern Litchfield County’s First Regional Locally-Grown Produce Distribution Facility. The grant is a federally funded competitive grant through the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) program. Northeast SARE is a USDA competitive grants program supporting agriculture that is profitable, environmentally sound, and good for communities.
Mayor Murphy states, “I am pleased that our application has been favorably recognized by the review committee at Northeast SARE, and has been selected as one of the ten projects to be funded from the more than sixty applicants. I’m sure that because our proposal links together so many diverse stakeholders in the community, we were given high marks for funding.”
The feasibility project builds upon existing collaborations already at work in the community between local farmers, the New Milford Farmland Preservation Committee, The New Milford Economic Development Commission, the New Milford Hospital/Plow-to-Plate initiative, New Milford Hospital’s Institutional Food Supplier (UNIDINE), the New Milford Economic Development Office and the Mayor. Each of the aforementioned collaborators contributed to the project design and the writing of the grant. Mayor Murphy extended special thanks to Julie Bailey of the Farmland Preservation Committee and Marydale DeBor, New Milford Hospital VP of External Affairs. She also acknowledged the technical support of Connie Manes of Kent, whose expertise was brought in via the New Milford Hospital’s Plow-to-Plate initiative.
The funding provided by the grant will afford the collaborative group to conduct a comprehensive quantitative analysis measuring supply and demand capacities related to locally-grown farm products, surfacing the most promising business models and hidden barriers, identifying potential leaders and building community and stakeholder support for the enterprise. It will provide the necessary data to determine what type of facility may be useful, as well as potentially successful, in expanding the capacity of local farms to be self-sustaining.
For additional information regarding the details of the grant, contact Vincent Nolan, Economic Development Supervisor, at (860) 355-5001.