NOFA-NY

We went to the NOFA-NY conference over the weekend. NOFA stands for Northeast Organic Farming Association. It was held in Saratoga Springs, New York at the Saratoga Inn. Frankly, we splurged and got a room at the Saratoga, tickets for all meals, pre- and full conference admission. The food was very good and we learned a lot from the individual sessions. Here's some of the highlights:

• learning about domestic fair trade from Elizabeth Henderson, author of Sharing the Harvest: a guide to community supported agriculture;
• two unique and engaging half day sessions on gardening and permaculture;
• a keynote by Brahm Ahmadi of People's Grocery in Oakland, CA., which was one of the few times during the conference that the focus was on non-white folk;
  
• going to a session on beginning livestock farming by Jim and Adele Hayes, parents of Shannon Hayes, the author of The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook, then when we were talking to her father after the session, Shannon called her father's cell phone and he handed her over to Phil to ask her why she wasn't at the conference;
• meeting Bobby Watson and Abu Talib of Taqwa Community Garden in the Bronx who are also in "Escape From Suburbia".

But not all was well and good in NOFAland. We ran into a friend who is the executive director of a non-profit in NYC and she was not having a good time. We asked why and she said that she was not feeling very welcome at the conference. This individual is an African-American woman. She felt hurt that folks at this conference were actually acting rudely to her. Unfortunately, she had assumed these folks would be on the same page as her, as would I. What I took away from that conversation was a greater sense of isolation that this woman was feeling as well as the realization that NOFA-NY is overwhelmingly white folks. It's too bad that some of these white folks haven't gotten over their racism.