Great Barrington — It was a day of exploring food practices and traditions at the ninth annual ThinkFOOD conference held at Bard College at Simon’s Rock on Saturday, October 15. The event was organized by The Center For Food Studies and included various workshops and lectures featuring representatives from various organizations.
The theme for this year’s conference was “regenerative.” “We chose the theme because we were thinking about how we can renew ourselves after the pandemic and in the face of climate change,” Director of the Center of Food Studies Maryann Tebben said. “When I take students for field trips to local farms to talk about sustainability, what often comes up is how people need to be sustainable so that the farmers can sustain their work and their lives. In thinking about that, I wondered what that means for the people around us, including who these farmers are and how can we think about regenerating both them and their work.”
Tebben said that part of the theme of the conference was to get young people interested in farming. “Local and sustainable foods are really important,” Tebben said. “If your food is coming from a place where you know your farmer, it probably has not traveled as far. The local farms take more care with the food that they make.”
Some parts of the event included discussions on farm management, such as a lecture on “Integrated Pest Management and Fruit Tree/Orchard Management” by Jaime Piñero, Extension Professor with the University of Massachusetts Stockbridge School of Agriculture. “Farms are important to supporting communities,” Piñero said before his lecture. “In turn, it’s important for communities to support farms, farm production, and organic agriculture. To me, biodiversity is key to promoting and supporting sustainable agriculture.”
April Hill Farms Director and Greenagers Staff member Sarah Monteiro was one of the two primary speakers for the “Empowering Young People and Building Community” workshop during the conference. Monteiro took part along with Lauren Piotrowski from the Roots Rising organization. “To me, the young people are the ones who are being confronted with some of the biggest dilemmas of the climate crisis,” Monteiro said in an interview before the workshop. “I think empowering them to make competent decisions, especially involving farming, is very important. I am not going to claim that I know the future of farming, but I do think that it’s important that it has a strong focus on regional agriculture and connectivity. I think that the sharing of information and collaborative efforts will be important to the future of farming.”
Monteiro added that anyone can get into farming, even without a farm. “Just growing anything, a house plant, a tomato in a pot, or a flower, is incredibly valuable,” Monteiro said. “I think there’s a great reciprocity relationship that comes from it. And I don’t think you need a ton of land or a ton of skills or a ton of money or machinery.”
