Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 6/27/2022
AMHERST – The Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) is hosting its 48th annual summer conference at Hampshire College on Aug. 5 to 7, with the theme “Decolonizing and Regrowing Our Food Systems – The Work of Our Time.” NOFA is a nonprofit organization made up of over 5,000 small-scale farmers, gardeners, consumers and food system reformers.
This is the first in-person NOFA meeting since COVID-19 began. According to its website, the conference will focus on necessary work to “undo the imbalanced, unjust and harmful food system, highlight the work of a regenerative-minded community, regrow equitable and just systems with greater awareness and understanding and improve the shared experience of friends, neighbors and communities.”
The conference will deploy keynote speakers, racial equity caucus spaces, workshops in Spanish, children’s programming and entertainment to achieve its goal. The recommended price for admission is $130, but a sliding payment scale offers prices ranging from $50 to $250 to make the conference more affordable. The higher payment options will offset the difference for anyone using the reduced fee. Registration and an itinerary are available online at www.nofamass.org/nofa-summer-conference/.
“This conference looks like it’s going to be a great celebration of being back together with our community, it’s been a long time,” Conference Coordinator Jason Valcourt said in an interview with Reminder Publishing. “Something that we’ve always centered in our work is supply chain matters, local food systems, these types of topics have been the core work of NOFA over the last four or five decades and we’re continuing to build a healthy reliance on local food systems to the best that we can. That takes gardeners, farmers and consumers to come together.”
Valcourt said the staff finds and selects speakers that are people they have observed or heard about that are connected to the community, love soil, plants and fit with part of NOFA’s mission to promote healthy food, organic regenerative farming practices and climate disruption solutions through soil management strategies. He said they are always looking for individuals that are up and coming with tools and techniques, new information or a fresh, relatable presentation of old information.
“The themes evolve each year,” Valcourt said. “We try to keep it relevant but also a little bit timeless. We are always trying to stay true to us being a farming organization. Soil health, farming tools and techniques, gardening tools and techniques, we try to stay in our lane in that way and work within our community in the role that we have with our community.”
Valcourt said he was proud to have this year’s theme prioritize acknowledging land and racial inequities while continuing to promote organic and sustainable farming and gardening solutions.
“NOFA has been working on and has been pushing the envelope on many themes over the years, and now we’re turning our organization to center this work,” Valcourt said. “It’s time, and we’re prioritizing addressing issues of racial equity as we work together to dismantle racism and colonization within NOFA and also to take part in the broader community doing the same.
“We have a membership that is a mixture of farmers, gardeners, food-system activists, organic consumers, land care professionals, everyone is welcome,” Valcourt said. “I think the primary core of our work is that I think we all love learning from farmers. We want to know what farmers know. This kind of information is best passed on face-to-face; you don’t have to be a farmer to come at all. We have food workshops, gardening workshops, land justice workshops, racial equity-focused workshops. [There are] lots of different ways to come to the conference.”