Dear EcoFarmers,
The 41st EcoFarm Conference launches on January 20, Inauguration Day for a new administration. As we approach this date, I feel a sense of guarded optimism yet trepidation about more violence. Perhaps the exhaustion we all suffer from the past four years will give way to renewal and re-imagination.
Imagination has never been in short supply at EcoFarm. As the Indian writer Arundhati Roy famously said, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Our role at EcoFarm is to provide opportunities for you to hear the breathing of another world - whether you’re in Asilomar or in your living room on our virtual platform - to help you strategize on how to accelerate its arrival. We create the space for this transformation in multiple ways. We provide a forum for the latest research for the analytically inclined. We offer models and case studies for the tangibly inclined. For the politically inclined, we discuss organizing strategies. And through community building and celebrations, we help to nurture those whose spirits need nourishment.
But we have come to recognize that the space EcoFarm creates is not a neutral container. The choices we make in planning the event shape how the conference impacts the world. We stand on the shoulders of those individuals such as the recently deceased Amigo Bob Cantisano who have helped bring us to our 41st gathering. But we can not stand still. We are changing our processes, the voices we hear from, and the topics we cover. In contrast to the forces that last week sought to hijack our government and hold it ransom to its white supremacist demands, we are moving toward a more democratic event, with the deliberate inclusion of historically marginalized voices, and showcasing topics that incorporate a broad vision of the change needed in agriculture and the food system. With this conference, we are putting a marker down about what we believe in. We hope you’ll join us, and that together this event will help us make another world, a reality. Que juntos realicemos ese otro mundo.
Andy Fisher,
Executive Director
EcoFarm Conference - Reimagining Our Future
Wed - Sat, January 20 - 23, 2021