FARMINGTON – “The Art of Eating Well” poster contest, sponsored by Western Mountains Alliance in Farmington, has a winner.

Participants had to come up with a simple, iconic image that conveys the importance of supporting local agriculture, and the 27 artists came up with a wide range of creativity.

The winner will be announced and receive the $1,000 prize, and all of the submissions exhibited, at an artists’ reception from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 9, at 161 Main St. The public is invited.

The poster is to be the face of a program of the Western Mountains Alliance to begin the work of creating a vital and viable local food system. Funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and implemented by Paula Day of the Maine Alternative Agriculture Association, the newly named “Eat Smart – Eat Local” campaign will have three components: a public relations drive to promote local farm products; a farm-to-school segment directed at SADs 9 and 54; and a series of technical assistance workshops for farmers aimed at helping them produce for local markets.

Asking local artists to take the lead in launching the public relations campaign was a deliberate attempt to draw the community into the project early on, according to Day.

Eating local, said Day, is rural economic development in its simplest and most direct form. It requires no recruiting of foreign industry and the infrastructure, arable farmland and willing farmers, is here. And local sustainable, chemical-free, organic and biological farming practices can provide the local consumer with the best tasting, most nutritionally dense and environmentally friendly products available.

The location for the reception, 161 Main St., is the site of a planned new coffeehouse where the focus will be on supporting small family farms, including those in the coffee and chocolate growing areas of the world.

For more information, contact Tricia Cook at Western Mountains Alliance, 778-7274.