Join us as we once work to broaden the Farm to Cafeteria discussion to embrace Boat to Cafeteria! This year we have once again teamed up with the National Family Farm Coalition to organize a panel titled “Food Sovereignty Principles and Farm to School Programs.” This panel will discuss ways in which the principles of food sovereignty – a community’s democratic control of its food – can be applied to Farm to School programs, enabling farmers and fishermen to provide foods for local schoolchildren while receiving a fair price for their product.

Stay tuned for more specifics on time of the panel, but here is scoop on the topic and who will be presenting.

Moderator, Kathy Ozer, executive director of the National Family Farm Coalition.

Panelists are:

• Darnella serves as a Cooperative Field Specialist and the Farm to School Coordinator for the Association (MAC), working with Mississippi and Louisiana cooperative farmers to provide produce for local schools. A farmer and farmer advocate based in southern Mississippi, she provides insight on successful Farm to School networks from the cooperative farmer’s perspective.
• Amanda is on the board of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. A graduate of Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy Agriculture, Food and Environment program, she participates in the Eat Local Foods Coalition of Maine. Her work focuses on corporate consolidation, linkages between watersheds and agriculture and synergies between fishermen and farmers.

As members of the international peasant organization La Via Campesina, we support and promote the principles of food sovereignty – the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable practices. Our panelists represent organizations that are working actively to help family farmers and fishermen gain access to markets that have closed over time or which have never been available to them. As well, seafood and other fish are often overlooked in Farm to School programs, but they are valuable and sustainable sources of protein for some communities. Panelist will describe their experiences and success stories to get food from family farmers and fishermen into their local schools at a fair price.