CLEAR LAKE – A pair of local food related meetings will be held Monday at Opportunity Village, 1200 N. 9th St. W., in Clear Lake.

These include a community input meeting for North Iowa local food planning, and the 2016 Spring Clear Lake Farmers Market Vendor meeting.

The Clear Lake Local Food Community meeting will run from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Opportunity Village’s gymnasium. It’s sponsored by Healthy Harvest of North Iowa, the Clear Lake Farmers Market Committee, and Opportunity Village, along with the North Iowa Local Food Coalition and Iowa State University Community Design Lab’s Agricultural Urbanism Toolkit program. This meeting is free.

This is the first in a series of local food system community meetings taking place in North Iowa.

“This series of meetings is part of The Agricultural Urbanism Toolkit – a three-year, multi-phase strategic planning and design process developed by the Iowa State University Community Design Lab to assist communities in visioning, designing and implementing holistic food system tactics,” said Courtney Long of the ISU Community Design Lab.

The full schedule of meetings is available at www.northiowafood.org.

“We want to invite the community into this fun and participatory process,” said Leigh Trembath, Healthy Harvest of North Iowa board member. “The meeting offers space for creative brainstorming and thoughtful conversation on where our food comes from and the entire closed-loop system that is involved from production to waste.

“This is not your usual sit down and listen meeting. Participants will be interacting with information and each other.”

Participants will be invited to provide their input about how various local food activities fit into the community. Participants should plan to spend at least 30 minuets interacting with the process.

A formal presentation about how this meeting fits into North Iowa’s local food development will be held at 5 p.m.

The second meeting – the Clear Lake Farmers Market – invites individuals, businesses and others interested in the Clear Lake Farmers Market to the Spring 2016 Vendor meeting, to be held from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the room the Forum Meeting Room.

“The Clear Lake Farmers Market Committee helps sponsor this community input meeting,” said Laura Tidrick, member of the Clear Lake Farmers Market Committee. “The market had a successful season in 2015 and we are excited about our plans for 2016.

“We recognize that the market is an important part of North Iowa’s local food developments and glad for the opportunity to hold these two meetings side by side. We invite our producers to come early to participate in the local food community meeting and then move over to our vendor meeting.”

For more information visit www.northiowafood.org or contact libbey.jan@gmail.com, or call (515) 851-1690.