Jessica is heading to Washington DC next week, April 3 and 4, to speak at the Local Foods Impact Conference hosted by the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, in partnership with The George Washington University. She is honored to have a voice at the table among an impressive group of local food system professionals who are coming together on a national level to evaluate the impact of local foods on economic development and to determine how to influence policy to support local farms.
Congress has expanded the number of grant and loan programs being offered to support local food systems, so the purpose of the conference is to explore how to best measure the impacts of local food investments, improve coordination across USDA agencies, and evaluate the extent to which disparate local food investments are complementary and reinforcing.
Jessica is speaking on a three person panel exploring the tools that can be used to assess the impacts of local foods along the food chain, including the profitability and viability of businesses that comprise the local foods supply chain. Click here to learn more about the conference and see the list of speakers, who are excellent resources in the local foods industry. The plenary sessions of the conference will be livestreamed on the Food Institute website on April 3, 4.
You are invited to join the conference livestream here!