“Our goal is to feed every single student in the state of Maine a single serving of Maine grown carrots each week during the school year,” explained Project Manager Chris Hallweaver. “We have 182,000 kids who go to school from Kittery to Madawaska all the way over to Eastport. They go to school from September to June, that’s 37 weeks. Our little serving is just a couple ounces, that’s a few carrot sticks, but if we can do this, it will be one million and a half pounds of carrots that will be grown and delivered throughout the state.”
Hallweaver emphasized the importance of jump-starting the carrot industry in Maine.
“I really feel like carrots can be put in the same category as potatoes, blueberries, and lobster,” added Hallweaver.
Cary Medical Center donated $1,000 to start the campaign, which will keep money paid for carrots in Aroostook County. Carrots will be processed by Northern Girl and delivered by Circle B Farms of Caribou. Circle B helps grow carrots along with LaJoie Growers of Van Buren, Edgecomb Farms of Limestone, Bill Parent of Hamlin, as well as Amish farmers in Easton and Hodgdon. Hallweaver added that he is working with the Maine Potato Board to identify additional McCain Foods growers that would be interested in diversifying their products to include carrots.
Bill Flagg, Cary’s director of community relations and development, gave a speech regarding the positive effects of introducing carrots to one’s diet.
“A plant-based diet could not only prevent heart disease, but it could actually reverse it,” said Flagg. “If you look at an X-ray of a man with clogged arteries, you can see the clogging reverse after months of a plant-based diet.”
Flagg announced that there will be a four-hour seminar on March 20 that explains the science behind consuming a plant-based diet.
“It’s nice for people to have options, instead of having to suffer a heart attack. We’ve had some great success stories from people who have had strokes and were initially told that there was nothing that could be done, and after years of a plant-based diet saw their symptoms and physiology turn around because of their diet.”
The long-term goal of this campaign is to create positive economic development through investing in the state’s food system, particularly outside of southern Maine, and to reinforce rural Maine’s economy.
