Schedule – 2020 National Good Food Network Conference

Tuesday, March 10

9am – 5pm: Full-Day Trainings

Farm to Institution Boot Camp: Part training, part working and feedback session, join this workshop to learn the fundamentals of developing successful and high impact farm to institution initiatives from the ground up from leaders from the worlds of K-12, health care, and higher education.

Food, Health, Jobs: Building Organizational Capacity for Urban Agriculture Programs: Join the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Windy City Harvest team for a 1.5-day workshop designed to provide hands-on training for organizations interested in growing or expanding urban agriculture work.

Let’s Meet About Meat: Hear from Jessica Roosa, owner of This Old Farm Food Hub in Indiana about how to establish and grow your business in meat processing and distribution.

Unlocking the Economic Development Finance Toolbox for Food Systems: Join leaders of the Council of Development Finance Agencies to learn about building a comprehensive financing strategy with the variety of development finance tools available, including bonds, tax credits, tax increment financing, special assessment districts, revolving loan funds, and more.

• Full-Day Trainings here

Wednesday, March 11

8am – 12pm: Morning Site Visits

Grow Dat Youth Farm: Visit this 7-acre urban farm located in the heart of City Park and learn about its robust youth leadership development organization which employs and nurtures 70+ high school age students each year.

The Whitney Plantation: Visit the only plantation museum in Louisiana that focuses exclusively on the lives and history of enslaved people and be joined by historian and foodways expert Zella Palmer who will further explore the historic and modern connections between plantations and food systems.

ReFresh Project: Join Broad Community Connections, Liberty’s Kitchen, Top Box Foods, The Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, and SPROUT NOLA and tour this innovative community health hub that houses multiple non-profits and serves as an anchor for workforce and economic development along the Broad Street corridor of New Orleans, one of the city’s most vibrant neighborhoods.

Values-based Food Business Tour: Learn about nuanced financing and business development models by visiting a range of values-based food businesses: Pythian Market, an urban food collective and community development project between Green Coast Enterprises and Crescent City Community Land Trust, Second Harvest Food Bank, Bhoomi Juices, and Melba’s Poboys.

• Site Visit Details Here

8am – 12pm: Morning Half-Day Trainings

Building a Collaborative and Leaderful Organization: Join the Biodynamic Association to learn specific tools for collaborative decision making, managing and communicating with team members, and developing mutually beneficial partnerships with other organizations.

Equity, Power Sharing and Authentic Engagement with Communities: Join Taproot Places to learn how to engage inclusively with whole communities and develop an actionable blueprint for equitable, authentic engagement with diverse communities.

The Culture of (In)equity: Join Community Vision to explore how to recognize and move away from “equity” as an abstract notion to effectively implement equity and inclusion strategies in daily management, operations and institutional practices and innovations.

Growing Resilient Cooperatives: Join co-op development experts and co-op founders to explore how cooperation can help farmers and ranchers access the same economies of scale and achieve the same market saturation as larger competitors.

Fixing Your Cash Problems: Join the Food Finance Institute to learn ways to improve a Hub, farm, or food business cash position and how to prepare to raise working capital from a wide range of sources.

Your Hub is Subject to FSMA, Now What? Practical Implementation Tools for Food Hubs: Join food hub practitioners and food safety specialists to receive practical knowledge to get your hub ready for FSMA certification including developing process flow diagrams and conducting a hazard analysis.

• Half-Day Training Details Here

12pm – 1pm: Lunch

1pm – 2pm: Welcome and Opening Plenary

Looking Back and Looking Forward: Welcome to NGFN 2020!
The opening plenary of the NGFN Conference is meant to welcome you to New Orleans, set the intentions for the Conference, and inspire you to ask questions, make connections, and think big during our time together. This dynamic presentation will feature speakers from the City of New Orleans, the Wallace Center, and members of the NGFN Conference Advisory Team to share their hopes and calls to action for the event and invite you to consider your own. Speakers will share their connection to the Conference theme of using lessons of the past to create a more just future for our food system. A musical performance from local artists will pay homage to the culture and energy of our host city. We hope this session will send you into the Conference feeling energized, curious and open.
Speakers: Jeff Schwartz, City of New Orleans, Joseph McIntyre, 10 Circles, Haile Johnston, Common Market, Tricia Kovacs, USDA, Lindsey Lunsford, Tuskegee University, Karen Spiller, Food Solutions New England
Read their full bios here.

2:15pm – 3:45pm: Breakout Session 1

4pm – 5:30pm: Breakout Session 2

5:30pm – 7pm: Welcome Reception

Thursday, March 12

7:30am-8:30am: Breakfast

8:45am-10:00am: Morning Panel

From Whence We’ve Come – Lessons from the Movement for Good Food
What have practitioners fighting for a healthier, more inclusive and more equitable food system achieved in the last several decades? What have their tools and strategies been? What can we learn from their missteps? Though many of our challenges feel unique and new, we are all standing on the shoulders of leaders who have been driving the movement for good food for decades. This panel will provide space for experienced leaders to share a longitudinal view of where we’ve been, celebrate the progress our friends and allies have made, and take a critical look at who has been left out of the mainstream movement for good food and why. This panel will ground us in history so we can shape our collective actions in the future.
Moderator: John Fisk, Wallace Center
Speakers: Ricardo Salvador, Union of Concerned Scientists, Sibella Kraus, Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAGE), Rashid Nuri, The Nuri Group, Rich Pirog, Center for Regional Food Systems, Michigan State University, Lydia Villanueva, Casa de Llano
Read their full bios here.

10:15am-11:45am: Breakout Session 3

11:45am-12:30pm: Lunch

12:30pm -1:45pm: New Orleans Plenary

The New Orleans Food System: Historical Inequities and Efforts for Equitable Economic Development
Food and farming systems offer ample opportunities for place-based economic development, however access to these opportunities and the economic benefits they generate are not and have never been equally available to all. This is especially true in and around New Orleans — a world renowned food destination that has long capitalized on the cultures, traditions, and foodways of communities of color who have been deliberately excluded from reaping the benefits of a booming food economy.

Flipping this script to build an inclusive and equitable local food economy that builds community wealth and power requires understanding how the legacy of enslaved peoples, black land loss, and historical and current barriers for food businesses owned by people of color have shaped and continue to influence the food system in the region. Speakers from across the value chain will share their efforts to ensure that the benefits of the vibrant food economy in New Orleans and the surrounding region are equitably distributed.
Moderator: Jenga Mwendo, Gulf Coast Housing Partnership
Speakers: Dennis Bagneris, Liberty’s Kitchen, Angela Provost, Pamela Broom, NewCorp, Inc., Sandy Nguyen, Coastal Communities Consulting, Inc., Marguerite Green, SPROUT Nola, Zella Palmer, Dillard University
Read their full bios here.

2pm-3:30pm: Breakout Session 4

3:45pm -5pm: Topical Break-outs (Open Space)

Friday, March 13

7:30am-8:30am: Breakfast

8:30am – 9:45am: Morning Panel

Act Locally, Think Globally: How Macro Trends Effect Food Systems Work (And What We Can Do About It) 
The first two decades of the 21st century have brought huge societal, environmental, and economic changes. In today’s globalized and increasingly interconnected world, our local food systems, communities, and economies are inextricably linked to shifting global forces. Climate change, systemic racism, economic inequality, market consolidation, and gentrification – these problems not only frame our work as food systems leaders; they are some of the defining issues of this century. At the same time, emerging technologies, shifting consumer demand, new market opportunities, and growing social movements fighting for racial equity, workers’ rights, and environmental justice are evolving how we work within this larger ecosystem and are catalyzing unprecedented opportunities for positive systems change.

Join leaders as they explore the impacts of these big-picture trends on food systems work today. Learn how they are proactively developing strategies to address the complex challenges and harness the new opportunities that these global currents create for the future our work, our communities, and our world.
Moderator: Tiffani Patton, Real Food Media
Speakers: Rodney Foxworth, Common Future, Brennan Washington, Southern SARE, Christina Spach, Food Chain Workers Alliance, Angela Chalk, Executive Director, Healthy Community Services
Read their full bios here

10am – 11:30am: Breakout Session 5

12pm – 1:15pm: Closing Plenary

Leading from the Future: Realizing a More Just Vision for the Good Food Movement
Increasing political, social, and environmental headwinds, and deepening needs in the communities we live in and serve are challenging food systems change leaders to be more creative, more effective, and more strategic to realize the potential of equitable food systems to generate good food, health and opportunity for all.

How might we forge more strategic, collaborative action across geographies, sectors, and issue-areas within the broader good food movement? How can we address urgent issues and still find space and possibility for more creative, collective, and transformative strategies to emerge? What change is required of us – at the individual, organizational, and collective levels—to embody the values we aspire to, and to share and build equity and power across communities and across our differences? In this closing plenary, we’ll explore these big questions with brilliant leaders from across the country, challenging participants to step up our game, work together more effectively, and accelerate the movement towards good food.
Moderator: Susan Lightfoot Schempf, Wallace Center
Speakers: Marla Karina Larrave, HEAL Food Alliance, Qiana Mickie, Just Food, Hnin Hnin, Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, Devon Turner, Grow Dat Youth Farm, Eric Simpson, West Georgia Farmers Cooperative
Read their full bios here.

1:15pm: Lunch and Close