April 2009
Dear Organic Colleague:
“This is our time,” is a refrain heard often in the organic community today. Organic producers along with our industry and non-profit colleagues are poised to take advantage of a number of opportunities that we only dreamed about a decade ago. To do so, we will have to surmount some entrenched, long standing opposition to organic agriculture. The good news is we know what we’re up against, and we now have concrete evidence of what happens when we work together: the organic wins included in the Farm Act of 2008 clearly represent our most visible success to date. In addition, reports from the countryside suggest that regional alliances are allowing new farmers to succeed with CSAs; urban activists are reaching out to rural producers to build school lunch programs; and communities of all shapes and sizes are starting to embrace organic products. Is there any better evidence that change is at hand than the first appointments to leadership positions at the USDA? The time to build on our collaborative experiences and share our strength is now.
We need to identify new resources of information, grow our networks, and replicate our successes. We need round-table conversations and provocative panels that offer tangible solutions to difficult problems. We need a retreat environment that allows opposing points of view to be thoroughly discussed. At a minimum, we must build mutual respect for positions taken and make a commitment to keep the conversation going. As we talk, listen and learn, we are sure we’ll arrive at a point where we can “shake hands” with an eye on the big organic picture.
We offer the 2009 Organic Summit as one such critical stop on our path to success. This year’s Organic Summit is again co-hosted by the Organic Farming Research Foundation and New Hope Natural Media. Together we have put together a dynamic program touching on the hot topics of today and those issues that will impact organic over the coming years. We have again found a remarkable location to hold the conference in a retreat environment - one where networking and/or small private conversations can be hosted in a community of mutual respect and appreciation and where something new always happens - like this year’s first-ever Organic Film Trailer Competition.
This is the third Organic Summit produced in partnership between NHNM and OFRF and the eighth overall including the leadership conferences at the Claremont Resort in the 90s. We believe this will be the best one yet. We’ll provide you with an inside look at the Obama USDA — or maybe your interests run more towards synthetic biology and “illegal” fertilizer? We have brought-back our “round table discussions” to take advantage of late breaking topics of interest and/or to provide background information on some of the more difficult challenges organic agriculture and industry face.
OFRF is a partner in all aspects of content and tone of the Organic Summit, and is a financial beneficiary of the conference. We invite you to participate in this event and encourage you to register as soon as possible so that we can begin the conversation prior to meeting in Stevenson, Washington June 3-5th, 2009. You can register by going to www.theorganicsummit.com or by calling 866-458-4935.
If you are considering attending but still have questions or want additional details on the prospective panelists, please do not hesitate to contact us. Please extend this invitation to those you feel should be part of these conversations. Thank you in advance for your consideration of our invitation to the
Organic Summit.
Kind regards,
Jylle Lardaro
Director- Organic Industry
The Organic Summit
jylle.lardaro@penton.com
Bob Scowcroft
Executive Director
Organic Farming Research Foundation
bob@ofrf.org
