2017 Conference Recap
Scenes from the Alaska Food Festival & Conference
This was the first time the AK Food Festival & Conference was held in Fairbanks. The Interior Alaska Food Network took the lead on planning the event and did a fantastic job of engaging their community in event activities and highlighting local Fairbanks farmers, chefs, food products, and food system people. Chefs from the Stone Soup culinary training program prepared a delicious lunch with salmon from the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, barley couscous from Alaska Flour Company, and hubbard squash soup from Dart AM Farms. The Food Policy Networking Event was a great time to mingle to local music and sample locally-made beverages and fresh shucked oysters from Jakalof Bay Oysters.
The AK Food Festival & Conference helps AFPC meet their goal to advocate, connect & inform around Alaska’s food system issues. The wide range of topics and activities brings together a dynamic and diverse crowd. As Liz Hodges-Snyder, co-chair of the AFPC Governing Board, says, “Our state – in terms of money and in terms of human resources – is too small for us not to be working together.”
Many people donated time and resources to make this event a great success! Go to the AFPC 2017 Festival & Conference website page to see the agenda, pictures, presentations, and all the wonderful sponsors, speakers and volunteers!
Robbi Mixon has managed the Homer Farmers Market for years, fostering amazing growth due to her knack for recognizing needs and addressing them. Her tenure includes the adoption of the market coin program and SNAP benefits program and other initiatives at the Market that have improved the access to local food as well as the advancement of basic infrastructure at the Market. The Farmers Market Managers Conference this spring was her vision and her hard work and it connected markets from around the state – again fostering a kind of growth that comes from building relationships. She is the coordinator for the new Kenai Peninsula Food Hub, a new and baffling form of market access for producers and a new platform for local food distribution. Juggling the new challenges this platform has presented, she continues to innovate as to how it can be modified to succeed here in Alaska. She has jump-started the Alaska Farmers Market Association with a recent FMPP grant for three years of support and further relationship building and resource sharing. I honestly can’t think of another soul in these times of contraction around the state who has done more to expand, on so many levels, the local food system in Alaska. She has indeed had a tremendous impact on Alaska’s food system, transformed our community food system, and is making a difference in Alaska’s prosperity, health, and self-reliance.
Congratulations, Robbi!
