There was plenty of food to eat at FamilyFarmed’s March 26 Good Food Festival, which drew thousands of attendees for the annual big public celebration of the fast-growing Good Food movement. But the program at the Festival, which included expert panels, artisan workshops and chef demonstrations, also provided plenty of food for thought. This photo essay provides a flavor of the event.
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 Financing & Innovation Conference is coming up Thursday at Chicago’s UIC Forum, and it is a must-do for anyone with an interest in the business of the fast-growing Good Food movement. The event — which makes up the first day of the three-day, 12th annual Good Food Festival & Conference — has an amazing lineup of farm and food entrepreneurs, industry leaders, thought leaders and policy makers.
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.
The nine Fellows participating in the second cohort of FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator represent a wide range of exciting entrepreneurial ventures — from bakeries to a prepared meal kitchen to an herb farm, from an apple orchard and cidery to packaged Latino food products to a kombucha maker, and more.
Just four years ago, Main Street in the small city of Corbin, Kentucky looked and felt like most downtowns in rural America: Vacant buildings. Empty sidewalks. A few surviving businesses. Today, though, there are thriving businesses and it’s hard to find a parking space on the mile and a half of Corbin’s Main Street. And local food is the engine driving this community’s revival.
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.
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!”
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.
As always, the Farm Aid concert held Saturday in Chicago was one of the entertainment events of the year, featuring founders Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, fellow Board member Dave Matthews, and numerous other great performers. But as this photo essay by Good Food on Every Table shows, Farm Aid is about much more than the music.
Chicago will host the 30th anniversary Farm Aid concert this Saturday (Sept. 19). Residents of the nation’s third most-populous city will have the opportunity to reacquaint with issues concerning family farmers, through the highest-profile — and most star-powered — event that benefits them and their causes. Farm Aid is not just about the music, though.
Farm Aid’s website includes a number of stories about “Farmer Heroes,” and one recent post featured Living Water Farms — which just happened to be one of the nine businesses that participated as Fellows in the first year (2014-15) of FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator.
The wholesale end of local food is a growing business sector that walks a fine line between profitability and social change, according to a new study from the Wallace Center, home of the National Good Food Network.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture kicked off the 16th annual Farmers Market Week Sunday, announcing a 64 percent increase in customer traffic in markets open for at least two years.
There are so many reasons to go out with your shopping bags during National Farmers Market Week and celebrate the rapid rise in the number of farmers markets across the nation. One of them may surprise you.