Kansas State Research & Extension is hosting the first-ever Kansas Local Food Summit in late August.
The Summit will help people from across the state make new connections and gain new ideas relevant to a wide range of different food systems interests, including food access, food waste & recovery, food hubs, community engagement, food policy, farm to school, and more.
“There is a lot of work to do to address the needs of Kansans for accessible, healthy, local, and affordable food, but we can do more when we work together and dream up creative solutions that fit the unique needs of our communities. But also, if we really want to make progress, we need to invest in our food system and provide the support to the farms, businesses, and organizations that make things happen at the local level,” Kansas State Research & Extension Local Food System Program Administrator Rebecca McMahon said.
Summit Sold Out
The Kansas Local Food Summit is a two-day event spanning August 27 and 28, at the Kansas Leadership Center in Wichita, KS. Due to a significant amount of interest in the summit, the event has filled all 150 available spaces for the 2024 session.
“We had a cap of 150 participants on the summit this year, and we are sold out with a waiting list. For a new event, that is great. We are anticipating that our location next year will have more space, so we hope to include more people in 2025,” McMahon said.
McMahon said there have been successful local food summits in other states and wanted to bring the success to Kansas. Wichita was the chosen location for the first ever summit due to its central location, and many of their partners are located in south-central Kansas. The current plan is to hold the summit in Salina in 2025.
Summit Speakers & Workshops
The second day of the summit will include two keynotes, breakout sessions, learning circles, and networking and mapping activities.
John Wittler, Executive Director of Ogallala Commons, will present the ‘Leveraging Value Chain Coordination to Build a Food System’ keynote during the morning session of the summit. The keynote will detail the composition, history, and components of value chains and their impacts on the food system.
Mary Hendrickson, PhD, Associate Professor of Applied Social Science, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Center of Food Security, will present the ‘Creating Food Secure Resilient Communities’ keynote in the afternoon session of the summit. Hendrickson’s keynote will show how food systems can be built and how a transformation in agroecology, civic agriculture, and democracy can lead to building resilience in Kansas communities.
McMahon said information used from 14 previous local food community roundtables was used while choosing speakers for the 2024 summit.
“We heard a lot from those participants about what they were struggling with and what they wanted to learn more about…One of the top needs was for more connection and collaboration, so we wanted to really focus on that in this Summit. We also heard that people want to learn from the success and failures of others, so we designed our afternoon sessions to be less focused on a presenter providing information and more an opportunity for people to connect, share, and learn with others interested in the same topics,” McMahon said.
The summit will also contain two breakout sessions with six different presentations including:
- Connecting Extra Food with the Need for Food – Stephanie Merritt, ICT Food Rescue
- Serving Producers and Communities by Developing Rural-focused Food Hubs – John Wittler, Ogallala Commons
- Community Engagement for Food Systems Change – Teresa Kelly, Kansas Rural Center
- Interventions Designed to Prevent Food Waste – Dietrich Earnhart, Professor, University of Kansas
- Implementing Farm to School: Leveraging Your Existing Efforts – Pantaleon Florez, Experiential Learning Specialist, Lawrence Public Schools
- Leveraging Funding to Address Food Bank Access and Safety Challenges – Daniel Craig, Cancer Outreach Coordinator and Michelle Coats, Mobility Manager, LiveWell Saline County
The Local Food Summit will also have participants engage in 25-minute sessions to network, exchange ideas, and share opportunities and resources. Six learning circles will be available to attendees, including Introduction to the State Food Policy Council, National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste, Food Hub, Organizing Gleaning Programs & Donation Gardens, Supporting Local Farm to School and Child Care Program Implementation, and Increasing Food System Capacity with Local Food Fellows.
“Our Summit theme is “Connect, Engage, Grow.” We hope that the Summit will help people from across the state make new connections, gain new ideas, and be inspired, and then take those ideas and connections home with them to make a difference for their communities,” McMahon said.
Although the 2024 session of the Local Food Summit is at full capacity, McMahon encourages those interested in joining a quarterly virtual local food town hall that is a great way to get updates from partners across the state and learn more about Kansas’s local food systems. The next town hall will be held on Oct. 30.
Other upcoming opportunities include Farm to School webinar series, Farmers Market Manager webinar series, and in-person local food producer workshops held around the state starting in February 2025.
