Shasta Farm to Fork

Local Foods, Local Places

Click here for the: Local Farms and Food Vendor Listing

The 2023 Your Downtown, Your Food survey is now closed. We will be posting the report and holding the drawing for the $50 gift certificate to a Downtown Redding restaurant soon. Thank you for your patience. For questions about the survey, please email Mary Messier, RD.

What is Local Foods, Local Places?

Local Foods, Local Places seeks to improve coordination & cooperation within and across local food efforts, ensure access to affordable, fresh & healthy food, and evaluate & enhance the local food system.
How will food shape the future of Downtown Redding? In the fall of 2020, more than 50 community members explored this question at a workshop facilitated by federal and state partners. Together, we looked at case studies, did asset mapping, and prioritized what’s next. As revitalization efforts continue, Redding’s community champions have placed increased emphasis on utilizing opportunities in the local food system to advance downtown revitalization, support local entrepreneurs, and increase access to local and healthy foods for its residents. Now, it’s time to take actions to advance our goals.

1. Improve coordination & cooperation within and across local food and downtown redevelopment efforts.
2. Ensure access to affordable, fresh, & healthy food for people who live, work, or visit downtown.
3. Evaluate & enhance the local food system & economy as a driver of downtown revitalization.

Special thanks to the federal partners from USDA, EPA and HUD who are investing in our community, choosing Redding as 1 of only 16 cities across the nation to be spotlighted for this work.

https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/local-foods-local-places

Want to take part? E-mail Mary Messier, RD

Click on the video to get a virtual tour of Downtown Redding and see the great things it has to offer!

Executive Summary Final Action Plan

Local Farms and Food Vendor Listing

The Healthy Shasta Website now includes a Local Farms and Food Vendor Listing where you can find a community resource of local producers in Northern California. This is one of the activities recommended in the Local Foods, Local Places Community Action plan mentioned above.

Did you know that if consumers in the six-county region surrounding Shasta County (Shasta, Trinity, Siskiyou, Modoc, Lassen, Tehama) bought $5 of their food from local farms each week, farms would earn $89 million of income annually – meaning $89 million per year would enter our region’s economy! Eating locally supports our community and our environment. As always, Healthy Shasta promotes the healthy consumption of food and recommends looking at our healthy eating resources and the 2020-25 Dietary Guidelines for information on the foods that fit best for your health needs.

If you are a farmer, rancher, or grower and would like to be included in the vendor listing, please reach out to us through the Healthy Shasta contact page here.

To align with the Healthy Shasta goal of promoting healthy eating by increasing access to fresh, local food; we have developed the following guidelines for participation in the Farm to Food listing.

Participation in the Farm to Food Listing is open to farmers, ranchers, and growers who sell foods they grow, raise, or produce on their farm.
Foods listed must be part of a healthy diet and locally grown in the following counties, Shasta, Tehama, Butte, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Placer, Siskiyou, and Trinity.

2021 Downtown Redding Food Survey Report

Seasonal Food Guide

Browse this guide and use the dropdown menu to pick any state, month, and produce to see when foods are in season, how to store them, and ways to cook them.

Farmers’ Markets

2023 Certified Farmers’ Market

Gardening/Produce Delivery

Gardening

Click on the photo below to check out the Healthy Shasta Gardening Toolkit.

Produce Delivery

Looking for a convenient way to include more fruits and vegetables in your day? Local businesses deliver organic produce to your home or work. Having the fruits and vegetables at your fingertips is one more way to help make the healthy choice the easy choice. Below are links to local produce delivery options.

Food Waste Recovery

Take a guess at the percentage of food that goes to waste in Shasta County.

40% of food in the US goes to waste. In California, 17-18% of all landfill trash/waste is food. In Shasta County an estimated 54 million pounds of food are wasted and in Redding alone, it is estimated that 34 million pounds of food are wasted on an annual basis. Let’s tackle food waste together.

Learn how at —>

Composting Guide from Resource Management

Click the photo to download your own copy

Check out what local Compost Cowboys is doing!

Have you thought about stepping into the world of zero-waste living but have felt immediately overwhelmed by the task ahead?

If so, you are not alone. Many, like you, have attempted to change their lifestyle to reduce their ecological impact. Unfortunately, they ended up feeling like they had fallen short of their goals. Below are a series of simple steps to help ease you into a zero-waste lifestyle and successfully lessen your environmental impact:

Refuse!

If you don’t need it, don’t take it. Say “no” to waste in the form of freebies or collectibles, produce wrapped in plastic, business cards, flyers, junk mail, and single-use disposables like bags, straws, cutlery, and cups. Don’t be guilted into accepting items you don’t need.

Reduce!

Review your lifestyle to find ways to reduce your consumption. Maybe this means letting go of unused household items, then donating or selling these. Shop with purpose and avoid unnecessary purchases, like the latest phone upgrade. Impulse purchases typically end up in the back of the closet, where they remain unused and unappreciated. Reduce the clutter and shop with purpose; buy less and make it last.

Reuse!

Use reusables. Switch out your disposable items for more permanent or reusable alternatives such as refillable water bottles and reusable straws, coffee cups, shopping bags, produce bags and reusable food wraps. Even something as simple as a glass jar can serve multiple purposes, like acting as your lunch box, a drinking glass, or a bulk food container. Reusing also means buying secondhand or repairing broken items. Repurpose old furniture or participate in various swap
meets.

Recycle!

Many have been programmed to believe that recycling is the first solution toward waste reduction. The truth is recycling is nearly the final step. Once you have refused, reduced, or reused as much as you can, it is time to recycle. Doing so closes the loop. For items that aren’t allowed in your curbside collection, such as batteries, electronics, and paint, use external recycling facilities. Visit www.recycle.co.shasta.ca.us for help finding recycling and disposal locations near
you.

Rot!

Compost and turn your food scraps and other organic waste, like grass and leaves, into a nutrient-rich soil additive for your garden. Did you know that by composting your food scraps, you are also helping to reduce the amount of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, produced by organic waste in our landfills? Give composting a try by adding your scraps to a compost pile, worm farm, or Bokashi bucket.