Final Day For Farm To Table Registration

Today is the final day to register for next week’s Virginia Farm to Table Conference at Blue Ridge Community College, the first public event since the state’s Farm to Table plan was launched a year ago.

 

More than 200 people already have signed up for the two-day conference, which will feature a lineup of farmers from the area and around the country, as well as authors and other leaders in the ag field.

 

Michael Shuman, author of “Local Dollars, Local Sense,” Elizabeth Ü, executive director of Finance for Food, Virginia Agriculture Commissioner and Broadway-area farmer Matt Lohr, and various Virginia Cooperative Extension agents are among the speakers.

 

Put on by a collaborative team, including Cooperative Extension and the Virginia Food System Council, the event is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday at the Plecker Workforce Center on BRCC’s Weyers Cave campus.

 

In addition to the quality of the facility, organizers chose Weyers Cave for the location because “the Shenandoah Valley has often been considered sort of the breadbasket for the state,” according to Eric Bendfeldt, extension specialist for community viability.

 

Event coordinators have nailed down 38 areas to address with the state Farm to Table plan, an initiative to help develop and promote healthy farms in the commonwealth and strengthen their connections with consumers.

 

This conference will tackle five of those goals: develop young and beginning farmers, help farmers gain access to capital, explore value-added processing opportunities, get community members more involved in local food and, finally, investigate possible cooperative models.

 

Registration for the conference can be done online by 6 p.m. today by visiting www.conference.virginiafarmtotable.org.

 

Tickets range from $15 to $80, depending on how much of the two-day conference someone wants to attend.

 

For more information, call 432-6029, ext. 106 or ext. 107.

 

Contact Candace Sipos at 574-6275 or csipos@dnronline.com