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.
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.
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!”
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.
Next to Wal-Mart on the edge of rural Viroqua, Wisconsin, a 100,000-square-foot abandoned industrial building is now bustling with new businesses and jobs from an unconventional source: The local food and farming sector.
Farm Aid’s effort to assist family farmers and expand the Good Food movement continue year-round, so the organization started by big-hearted music legends isn’t just about the music. But Farm Aid’s annual benefit concert is what made it famous. And the 30th anniversary concert they staged in our hometown of Chicago on Saturday was one hell of a show.
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.
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.
Rick Bayless’ mastery of regional Mexican cuisine has made him one of the nation’s most celebrated chefs. He also is a Good Food advocate who is greatly concerned with the welfare of family farmers and the integrity of the food we eat. He thus is distressed by a court ruling that overturned Mexico’s two-year-old ban on genetically modified (GMO) corn.
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.
Foods and beverages carrying a “local” label appear poised to become the leading symbol of trust and transparency to consumers as the authenticity halo of such terms as ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ lose momentum, claims market analyst The Hartman Group — as reported by the FoodNavigator-USA.com website.
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.
FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Business Accelerator is now accepting applications from food and farm entrepreneurs who want to participate in the program’s second year of mentoring and learning experiences.
Chicago is one of the nation’s top cities for great food and drink. Each year folks here are presented with an array of big tasting events to choose among. But there are both good food and Good Food reasons why hundreds of people choose to attend the annual Chef BBQ event at Green City Market in Lincoln Park.
Local Foods, a Chicago distributor of local and regional farm and artisan food products, has opened a 27,000-square foot store not far from the city’s downtown. It is carrying produce, dairy, eggs, and meats from farms in the Midwest region centered on its biggest city, along with fresh, frozen and packaged foods from top regional artisans — and is considered a big step forward in local food retailing by advocates of the Good Food movement.
Can a rich dessert be considered Good Food? It can when it is Eli’s Cheesecake and its owner, Marc Schulman, is a strong supporter of the Good Food movement and makes the effort to source from local producers when it is possible to do so.
Even in the Internet age, it can still be challenging for Good Food buyers and sellers to find each other and do business. That is why FoodTrace, founded in 2014 by young Chicago entrepreneur Riana Lynn, is drawing so much positive attention for its technology-based platform, designed to enable producers and food businesses to connect.
by Sustainable Food News, guest contributor Sustainable Food News reported on June 17 about the Michigan Good Food Fund, which is expected to raise $30 million to provide capital to and assistance to businesses working to expand access to Good Food in underserved communities. This program, created with initial funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Read more about Sustainable Food News: Michigan Good Food Fund to Put $30 Million into Expanding Access[…]