Conference Information

“A Place at the Table”

Vivid childhood memories of formal dinners with grand-parents include two things, my grandmother’s love of preparing fresh summer squash and the unwavering delivery of Grace by my grandfather. We knew to sit at the table in waiting for him to speak, “Bless this food for our use, and thus to Thy service. Amen.” My grandfather’s acknowledgement of a transcendent purpose to sustenance.

No matter what brings us to NOFA we all are seated around a table for a common need, to fulfill the promises of life lived consciously and with reverence for the wonders of our human creation in our natural world, Earth. We believe that our organic practices and scientifically informed choices will advance our human condition and preserve Earth and her gifts for our children. All of humanity and all of Nature, from the smallest micro-organisms in soil and sea to the currents of rains and winds are seated at this table. Here in New Hampshire we gather at our Winter Conference to raise up and join our voices for the Organic future.

Citizens all over our country pay attention to voices from NH at every cycle of Presidential elections. Washington just might hear NOFA as well, the voice for Organics in New Hampshire. The Obama Administration and Congress are supporting Organic Agriculture, the newly independent National Organic Program (NOP) is enjoying increased funding: $2.6 million in FY08 and $3.2 million in FY09. New leadership with the appointment of Miles McEvoy, to serve as Deputy Admin-istrator of the NOP, also signals growing focus on organic. The USDA, identifies organic as the fastest growing part of our nation’s agriculture industry. In 1990, when the Organic Foods Production Act established the NOP, sales of organic foods were recorded at $1 billion. The USDA projects organic trade of $23.6 billion in 2009. National attention is on Organic. Clearly, we have A Place at the Table. The evolution of our organic voice is now part of a national conversation.

Community

Humanity has a great table to set. Our collective survival is at stake. Here in New Hampshire we know that our local community is our economy. Coming together in the Winter Conference is a place setting for finding voice, inspiration, and support. We purposefully grow our local economies with the building of our NOFA community. Each of us, I believe, is gifted with some talent, aspiration, and purpose. Bringing together leadership, experience, and curiosity fulfills our need to make a difference, to build hope, and create the future.

Winter Conference forums foster engagement in advocating for organic food production and land care and are responsive to growing concerns for citizens in every aspect and walk of life. We see children and their families, farmers and marketers, and all of us—consumers, who desire conscious choices for food, energy, and natural resources. We sit together to listen, learn, and motivate action. Engaging with organic purpose we expand our abilities in meeting the complexity of emerging environmental challenges. Our best effort will inspire, compel, and direct your next steps to the table where you will find your seat. Perhaps by forming a local Agriculture Commission, crafting legislative action, demonstrating growing methods to interns, or simply shopping with more mindfulness and providing your family and friends with fresh, safe, local organic food.

Mission

In exploring other options for our Keynote speakers I visited the Jane Goodall Institute website where I found that their statement of core values spoke to the fundamental purpose of growing in our NOFA-NH Winter Conference event forums: “We strive to respect, nourish and protect all living things; people, animals and the environment are all interconnected …We believe that knowledge leads to understanding, and that understanding will encourage us to take action… We believe that every individual has the ability to make a positive difference.”

Thinking of those values in the context of furthering the reach of Organic Agriculture through our Winter Conference is most literally setting A Place at the Table. We invite each other to engage in teaching and learning stewardship, to articulate our messages, to join our organic voices, build our structures and collect our tools for transformational change, and ultimately, responsibly, bring more wholesome nutritious foods to dining tables throughout New Hampshire.

Youth

We include families with their school age children bringing curiosity to engage in learning. We welcome Teens and Young Adults with emerging passions, and their championing of innovation.

As we face the challenges of today’s Human Ecology, hope is in Youth. We set a table for inclusion by expanding the invitation to the Winter Conference program. Engaging Young Adult participants, presenters, and volunteers within an intergenerational forum is envisioning the future of organic.

Program

Membership in NOFA-NH reflects widening areas of interest and concern for organic. The scope of Winter Conference program is evolving. Bringing together presenters, for the breadth of interests held by our membership, is no small task. Board members are organizing Workshop offerings to include popular beginner and ‘how to’ topics: animals, business, community action, gardening, greenhouse, food preservation, irrigation, land care, among many. After a successful Herb and Garlic Day with the NH Herbal Network presenters bring practical informative workshops by NH herbalists to the forum.

Food Coordinator

Our new volunteer food coordinator, Mario Capozzoli, continues the tradition of hosting a potluck at the Winter Conference. We are lucky to have Mario, founder and editor of greatgrandmother.org and a classically trained chef, here and abroad. Mario works in the private chef world, grows his own organic crops, and has a successful consulting business.

Mario is a NH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener. His passions are cooking with locally sourced organic foods, connecting with neighbors throughout New England, writing, and spreading the word to kids and their parents about the value of a sustainable, fair, and just food system. Mario's goal is to make a positive difference in his small part of the world.

 ….The local community must understand itself… as a community of interest — a common dependence on a common life and a common ground. And because a community is, by definition, placed, its success cannot be divided from the success of its place, its natural setting and surroundings: its soils, forests, grasslands, plants and animals, water, light, and air. The two economies, the natural and the human, support each other; each is the other’s hope of a durable and a livable life. -Wendell Berry Home Economics, Does Community Have a Value?