People gather outside to discuss healthy food and communities

A number of ASI staffers attended the recent Food and Community conference, put on for programs and organizations who receive funds from the W.K. Kellogg foundation. The meeting offered the opportunity for individuals working in a variety of sectors that relate to food and community to come together, share best practices and experiences, and learn about what each other were doing. Friend of ASI Michael Dimock wrote a blog post about his conference experience over at the blog Civil Eats. Dimock writes:

"...the interests and people that now constitutes the “movement” for good food is truly diverse. Over six hundred folks ranging from late teens to late seventies, white, brown, black, Asian, African, European, Indigenous, urban, rural and suburban showed up. Some of them focus on nutrition and health, others on urban or rural food production, some on farmworker rights or distributing good food to schools and low-income communities of color. Others are improving policy or doing research to support all the areas represented. Any way you slice it, the evidence exists that the movement is getting very large, representing millions of Americans."

Read more of the post over at the Civil Eats blog. Also at Civil Eats, find out about another cool project that generated a lot of buzz at the conference, a new AmeriCorps program, FoodCorps, that would focus on service related to food and agriculture.

Stay tuned for a video dispatch from the conference in our next blog post.