Food Systems Network Gatherings, Transition to Organics (NWTOPP), afpc events & conferences, cottage foods
Recap: October 2025 Alaska Food Systems Network Gathering
By Sundance Visser, Operations and Finance Director, AFPC
The fall 2025 Alaska Food Systems Network Gathering, held virtually on October 23rd, brought together a lively group on Zoom. These lunch-time quarterly gatherings stemmed from a desire to continue the food systems conversations between our conferences and to keep our forward momentum and collaboration strong throughout the year!
These meetings are not recorded but we do share slides with all who registered and here in the recap blog.
Highlights from the October Gathering
The gathering opened with a word cloud brainstorm answering the question “What keeps you motivated to keep working to improve food systems in your communities?”
AFPC Updates
This quarterly gathering provided a platform for the Alaska Food Policy Council to share program updates. These included the formation of the newest AFPC working group – School Nutrition, meeting on the first Wednesday of the month from 1:30-2:30pm. Sign up if you’d like to join the conversation!
Additionally, Rachel Lord, AFPC’s Advocacy Director introduced the Alaska Food Value Chain Coordination Council (VCCC). This is a voluntary, cross-sector stakeholder group with a shared goal of improving the movement of food in and around Alaska.
The Alaska VCCC brings together producers, processors, shippers, retailers, nonprofits, researchers, Tribal organizations, state and federal agencies, and others to:
- Identify barriers in food movement
- Track progress over time
- Share solutions and best practices
- Inform public policy and investment
She also shared advocacy updates in the quarterly Advocacy Moment and announced the dates for the 2026 Food Security Week, Juneau Fly-In as February 9-13, 2026.
- Regulation Reduction Efforts in Alaska – AO 360 (New blog!)
- USDA Cancels Household Food Security Report (New blog!)
- Let our Members of Congress know lack of data won’t stop hunger and will only hurt efforts to increase food security.
Northwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program
We introduced our work with the Northwest Transition to Organic Partnership (NWTOPP) program. Check out our website for links to everything we share here!
We started by playing our newly created video series highlighting Alaskan organic producers and processors. You can watch the videos about Sun Circle Farm in Palmer, Flying Moose Farm in Nikolaevsk, and the Kachemak Kelp Hub in Homer on our website. Many, many thanks to Matt and Alex Lowber of LOBO Brand Shop for their fantastic work producing these videos!
Melissa Heuer of Spork Consulting introduced our 2025 Rhodiola project that includes surveys, an update to the 2024 Alaska Rhodiola Market Report, and a webinar of findings (December 6, 2025).
Guest speaker Claire Davis of NWTOPP gave a comprehensive overview of organic certification, including resources and funding opportunities. Check out her slides in the slides deck linked at the bottom of this blog and email her at topp@tilth.org with questions.
Homemade Food Exemption Overview
We then introduced our second guest speaker, Sarah Lewis, UAF Professor of Extension, who gave an overview of the 2024 Homemade Foods Exemption. Her slides are included in the slide deck linked at the bottom of this post, and they are a great resource for anyone interested in learning about what foods are allowed, best practices, and risk management. Homemade food producers can schedule a consultation with Sarah or email her at sarah.lewis@alaska.edu to learn more.
What’s Coming Up
Sign up here for the 2026 Alaska Food Systems Gatherings Series!
We have one sign up form and one Zoom link for all four meetings.
- January 22nd, 11:30-1:00pm
- April 23rd, 11:30-1:00pm
- July 23rd, 11:30-1:00pm
- October 1st, 11:30-1:00pm
Speakers and topics will be announced soon.
