2026 Annual Report

A message from our Executive Director, Robbi Mixon

Dear friends,

I won’t mince words — this annual report encapsulates a truly wild ride for AFPC and for food systems across the state. It also reveals the raw power of a collective commitment to feeding people well, a movement rooted deeply in human nature and broadly across the globe.

In February, I was informed that AFPC’s monumental collaborative endeavor, the Regional Food Business Center, had its funding frozen during federal deliberations about the validity of investments in underserved and underinvested communities: our project specifically served islands and remote areas in Alaska and throughout the Pacific and Caribbean. For the ensuing six months, we were trapped under that freeze, forced to furlough and say goodbye to talented staff until the project was officially terminated. During that time, the need for healthy local food systems did not disappear. Our relationships did not dissolve over those tenuous months. Our board and staff did not sit back, defeated. The disparity between what we have and what we still need to accomplish has felt intense, but not impossible.

As I gaze at the artwork we commissioned to represent the food wealth of regions that came together for the Regional Food Business Center, I am grounded: profound understanding can be found in the self-expression of a salmon, of kalo, of breadfruit. Hope lives in them. They, like us, carry another generation of effort within, contributing to a season they will never directly experience. Even those beings we harvest as food, whose genetic contributions to the future might be technically disrupted, directly nourish our reverence and appreciation for their physical, social, and cultural gifts to us; they give themselves to us and we give ourselves to them in return.

We all carry these seeds of hope within.

Deciduous plants may have shed their leaves, appearing dormant, but their quiet and essential work of preparing for spring budding is well underway. The blurring of endings and beginnings and the constancy of change are grounding reminders: our food systems are much more firmly rooted in these laws of nature than they are in any political framework. The latter is like the weather: relevant, but fleeting. And we, as participants within these expansive systems, are powered by shared values that keep us committed and connected. We know what it means to be able to rely on a neighbor for food. Our bodies know what freshness tastes and feels like. Our spirits respond to the taste of traditional foods, of cultural wealth. We share these values, especially in remote areas like those once united under the umbrella of the Regional Food Business Center.

At AFPC, we have declared values like these and more, and are grateful for your shared commitment, vision, and contributions. As you explore our 2025 Annual Report, may these stories remind you that even in times of uncertainty, our shared visions continue to germinate, sending out new shoots of possibility for the seasons ahead.

Robbi Mixon,
Executive Director