In collaboration with Senator Mark Montigny, and UMass Dartmouth, The Marion Institute will be hosting the 2021 Virtual Food Summit on October 13th, from 6:30 pm - 8 pm.  
 
The Marion Institute’s Southcoast Food Policy Council will present key findings from the newly completed 2021 Food System Assessment Report for Southeastern MA. Our distinguished list of panelists will discuss the role regional food assessments play in helping support and shape food policy and improve local food systems.

How can we shift power in our communities and center the work of young leaders of color? How can the food movement intersect with the racial justice movement? Join National Farm to School Network for a virtual Movement Meeting on Wednesday, Oct.14 from 1- 2:30 pm ET, featuring young leaders of color working to transform their community, for deep conversation and action-oriented reflection on how the next generation is working to intersect the food movement with racial justice, environmental justice, economic justice, and other key justice-centered movements. A crucial step towards our vision of a just food system for all is centering the voices of our next generation of leaders. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend this free event.

NPQ kicks off the 2021-22 season of our Remaking the Economy series in Indian Country. In partnership with the First Nations Development Institute (“First Nations”), we bring three leading Indigenous economic justice leaders who will speak to their work and the challenges they face in a discussion-style format. Our panelists are:

Heather Fleming (Navajo) is executive director of Change Labs, the only business incubator and accelerator on Navajo land. Fleming works with Hopi and Navajo (Diné) citizens to create a supportive business ecosystem for Native entrepreneurs.

Vanessa Roanhorse (Navajo) is CEO of Roanhorse Consulting, a firm co-designing a character-based lending program, with a vision of redesigning underwriting to meet Native community needs. She is also a cofounder of Native Women Lead.

Lakota Vogel (Cheyenne River Sioux) is CEO of Four Bands Community Loan Fund, a community development financial institution (CDFI) in South Dakota. The CDFI she leads is redesigning lending to enable Native residents to build homes on trust lands.

Operating a direct seafood business requires a wide range of skills and expertise. In many cases, seafood harvesters that participate in direct marketing also need to purchase additional permits, equipment, and insurance. These factors make direct marketing significantly different than selling to a middleman. To help new and established direct marketing businesses achieve their goals, the Local Catch Network is teaming up with Ecotrust to offer a cohort-based accelerator. 

Scale Your Local Catch (SYLC) is a nation-wide, producer-centered business accelerator developed to strengthen local and regional seafood systems by addressing challenges associated with direct marketing and by building the knowledge, skills, and networks needed for direct marketing seafood businesses to scale up their operations and increase their capacity and viability for long-term resilience. 

Register for the information session on October 15th from 1-2pm ET to learn more about Scale Your Local Catch. During this time, we will provide an overview of the program and address questions. 

Now in its 13th year, the Food Sovereignty Prize is given annually on or around World Food Day to grassroots organizations advancing food sovereignty – the right of all peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It stands in contrast to the World Food Prize, which perpetuates the myth that we can produce our way out of hunger.

This year’s honorees, FENSUAGRO and Eastern Woodlands Rematriation, have been growing food, defending territory, sharing knowledge and building power in the face of state violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and mounting climate chaos.

Join us in this Community of Practice – a space to explore and learn together about what it could mean to decolonize our work around networks

Always wanted to set up a food pantry on campus, but feeling overwhelmed on how to get started? Created a food pantry but not sure where to get the continued funding or staffing? Food pantries can be helpful for combating food insecurity on campus yet establishing one can feel daunting without the right buy-in, infrastructure, and support. Join speakers Nicole Reilly from University of Vermont and Annie Ciaraldi from UMass Lowell to learn strategies for effectively establishing your food pantry and sustaining it for the long term. From marketing to interdepartmental networking, establishing critical partnerships on campus and in the local community can greatly help your food pantry.

Join fellow travelers from October 25 through November 19 to practice "the art of being fully human in a time of crisis"

Four weeks to connect, share gifts, learn, and support one another in our work and our lives

Farmworkers and other agricultural laborers, such as those working in meat processing and packing facilities, are on the frontlines of toxic pesticide exposure and other human rights violations. Farm work is one of the most dangerous professions and continues a legacy of agricultural injustice and racism in the United States. When we participate in an industrial agricultural system, we participate in the oppression of farmworkers. Join us as we hear from Araceli and Elisa, two farmworker women, and Lariza Garzón, the Executive Director of the Episcopoal Farmworker Ministry as they share their experiences and ideas for creating change.

Join Indigenous Seed Keeper Rowen White and Black cook activist Jocelyn Jackson to dream into a food culture of liberation & care on November 4th, at the first Around The Table event of RFRS' new virtual series.

How can we reclaim our shared food culture to feed our collective care, healing, liberation, and joy? This is the question at the heart of Real Food Real Stories' (RFRS) November 4th virtual roundtable. Join celebrated food activists, Mohawk Seed Keeper and farmer Rowen White and Black culinary artist and Peoples Kitchen Collective co-founder Jocelyn Jackson, for an electrifying conversation on decolonizing mainstream food culture, and the role food culture plays in shaping our lives, stories, and dreams for the future.

A new virtual series, Around The Table events feature informal conversations with thought leaders, elders, organizers, and culture-bearers working at the intersection of food, culture, place, and power. Together, we take a deep dive––sinking our teeth into the juicy stories, live questions, and challenging conversations buzzing in our ecosystems.

Young Farmers 7th Annual National Leadership Convergence will be held virtually as the second half of a two-year event with the theme of “Achieving Equity Through Agriculture.“ In 2021 we will gather in a hybrid virtual and in-person format to move from learning to action to make equitable change in our own food and farming communities. 

Last Convergence four hundred farmers, ranchers, and supporters from across the country gathered virtually for a week in November to build a shared understanding of the racist histories of American agriculture, and how we came to have the food and farming systems we do today.