It was another good turnout of about 30 enthusiastic individuals for the second Grand Forks and Boundary Agricultural Society (GFBRAS) food forum, titled Ideas into Action: The future of OUR food in the Boundary, on Saturday at the Senior’s Centre.Unfortunately, both keynote speakers were unable to attend due to poor weather and illness. Despite that, organizer Sheila Dobie, president of GFBRAS, said it was a very productive meeting.“It was excellent, I thought,” she said. “Neither of our speakers was able to attend, but this was able to give us a lot more to get our working group sessions done. I think we received a lot of excellent input and ownership.”Dobie added that they were able to sign up people for various projects and identify which projects people were excited about and wanted to see happen.“We’ve got some good marketing strategies coming up,” she said. “Things like a web-based directory. We’ve got a fundraising event we’re hoping to get involved in. We’ve got ideas around integrating the Boundary Country label with the Boundary Country Grown label that will assist us in identifying local products.”Among the other projects identified were storage infrastructure and education initiatives.“There’s a large, new edible community garden-type project,” she said. “There was somebody in the room that has already given it some legs. They’ve had some conversations with some land-owners. We’ve got some real specifics that people got really excited about that we can start moving forward on.”

Grand Forks Gazette