The Good Food movement has made tremendous strides during recent years, but this progress is fresh and fragile. Among the biggest challenges is ensuring consumers that the Good Food claims made by people in the industry are legit. So FamilyFarmed’s Good Food on Every Table is launching the new chef-driven series, “Farm to Table: Keeping It Real.”
There is a strongly held belief in the Good Food movement that local food can spur both urban and rural revitalization, and that vision is getting clearer in the state of Kentucky. Louisville has led the way with a strategic focus on finding and connecting entrepreneurs along the regional supply chain from farm to table.
Frontera Farmer Foundation is a Chicago-based nonprofit that reflects the commitment of Chef Rick Bayless and his Frontera restaurant group to help local and regional farmers build their businesses and succeed. The foundation presents the lineup of its 2016 grant recipients, and we are very pleased to see many friends and associates of FamilyFarmed.
Nature’s Farm Camp is an overnight camp, on a working farm, that immerses Chicago-area kids in a fantastic food-and-outdoor adventure. Tim Magner, in this contributed article, explains how in a world where kids are bombarded with hyper-processed foods loaded with fat, sugar and salt, Nature’s Farm Camp shows them something different — and better — in a beautiful natural environment that connects them with where food comes from.
When U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack delivered the keynote address at FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival & Conference March 24, he spoke three little words that are close to the hearts of the Chicago nonprofit organization and its community of like-minded advocates: Good Food movement.
George Siemon co-founded and heads Organic Valley, the Wisconsin-based producer of dairy products, meats and vegetables that is the nation’s biggest organic farmer cooperative. The work of the company to advance the Good Food movement was honored with FamilyFarmed’s Good Business Business of the Year Award.
The Good Food Festival — FamilyFarmed’s big annual public celebration of the fast-growing Good Food movement — is today (Saturday, March 26)! Tickets, just $15 with children 12 and under free, can be purchased at the door for this fun, informative, tasty, inspiring and very family-friendly event.
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Trade Show and Industry Conference Friday — the middle of three days of the organization’s 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference — got off to a rousing and inspiring start with an Opening Symposium featuring leading voices from across the local and sustainable food business and advocacy sectors. Steve Koch, deputy mayor of the city of Chicago, delivered a keynote speech.
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival is this Saturday at the UIC Forum on the campus of University of Illinois at Chicago. With exciting activities for adults and children too, it is hard to boil down the list of things to do. But we think this Top 10 Reasons to Attend the Festival list will be a useful guide.
Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery, LLC, located in Champaign, Illinois, makes artisan, farmstead goat cheeses and goat milk gelato from its herd of 80 milking goats. Owners Leslie Cooperband and Wes Jarrell also host Slow Food, farm-to-table meals and other agri-tourism events. And now they are movie stars, And now they are even movie stars, thanks to A Farmer’s Road, a new documentary about Prairie Fruits, which will be shown March 26 at FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival.
FamilyFarmed’s 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference is scheduled for March 24-26 at Chicago’s UIC Forum, and exhibitor registration is open. Robin Schirmer, project coordinator for the Chicagoland coalition of CSA farms, shares her experience working with and attending the event.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently released new regulations for produce under the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), bringing the difficult process of implementing this major law to closure. There is no better source for information about the new regulations than the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which has published a two-part series of blog posts on the subject that we share with you here.
FamilyFarmed’s annual Good Food Festival & Conference is the oldest and largest event in the Midwest focused on local and sustainable food. At its heart are the producers, buyers, sellers and others who exhibit their businesses there. Exhibitor registration is open for the 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference, scheduled for March 24-26 in Chicago, and there is a $100 discount for participants who sign up by Dec. 9.
Chicago nonprofit FamilyFarmed will greatly expand its efforts to train farmers across the United States through cooperative agreements with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a partnership with Whole Foods Market. These developments also sync up with FamilyFarmed’s own new Direct Market Success program — aimed at “growing young farmers” — supported by an IndieGoGo crowd-funding campaign.
FamilyFarmed has launched a fundraising campaign — titled “Help Us Grow Young Farmers!” — to support the latest expansion of its extensive efforts to train farmers across the United States so they can achieve sustainable success. The campaign, staged on the IndieGoGo crowd-funding site, is titled “Help Us Grow Young Farmers!”
Many of those involved in the Good Food movement believe that craft distilling deserves to be considered part of it, but the question has been raised about whether a distilled spirit needs to contain ingredients produced by local farmers in order to be considered truly local. Many producers now are touting local sourcing as a major selling point.
Farm Aid publishes a series of profiles on its website of “Farmer Heroes.” Their most recent profile is of Darius Jones, a young Chicagoan and friend of FamilyFarmed, for whom the “hero” title is apt. A troubled youth that resulted in him being incarcerated also set him on the path to the cutting edge of urban agriculture in his hometown.
A report by the National Young Farmers Coalition, titled Farming Is Public Service: A Case for Adding Farmers to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, shows that student loan debt is one of the key barriers preventing more would-be farmers and ranchers from entering agriculture.
As has been the case since its very beginning in 1985, the nonprofit Farm Aid organization’s annual schedule is built around a mega-star fundraising concert held in a different city every year. But when it came to Chicago for its milestone 30th anniversary concert, Farm Aid presented events that provided deep perspective on the farm crisis of the 1980s that gravely threatened tens of thousands of family farmers, and spurred the organization’s creation.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Sept. 10 released new regulations under the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), bringing the difficult process of implementing this major law closer to closure. And the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition — which has been deeply engaged in this rule-making process for five years as an advocate for small and medium-sized farms — this week has published a three-part series of blog posts on the subject that we share with you here.