Rural Life Gathering Highlights
This annual conference of Churches’ Center for Land and People will again share prescriptions for creative change to challenges America faces in food and farm production. We’ll address practical, effective ways we can educate and motivate congregations to be part of positive solutions – not vulnerable to growing problems that threaten food security in our nation and world.
Our presenters will speak to our theme, “Hope in Action,” w ith real life models, experience, guidance and insights to: (1) promote local food initiatives, policies, cooperative development, alternative farm training and placement, and (2) foster community supported agriculture enterprises, particularly on religious properties and with congregations.
We invite farmers to connect with consumers through the church, farmers to consider alternatives for cooperation through our presenters, churches to strike up relationships with seasoned producers and aspiring young farmers and people of all faiths to interact with one another to share common reverence for food, the Earth, our natural and non-renewable resources.
PRE-REGISTRATION – Complete the form on the reverse of this column, clip and mail with payment to Churches’ Center for Land and People, 4200 County Hwy M, Middleton , WI 53562 . A limited number of partial scholarships are available through a grant to CCLP. Contact cclp@tds.net or 608 831-9319
Gathering 2006 makes hope its business
Missouri, Drake livestock specialists, eco-farming priest provide new focus
Businesses, churches, farmers and consumers will not only learn ways to grow communities with innovative food enterprises at this year’s Rural Life Gathering. They’ll taste it in three square meals.
Shalom Retreat Center will host the tri-state conference on Thursday and Friday, Feb. 9 and 10, at Mount St. Francis in Dubuque . The public is invited, and anyone of any faith or belief is welcome.
It’s the first time Churches’ Center for Land and People, begun in the 1980s farm crisis at Sinsinawa Mound, will move the Gathering across the river into Dubuque . A number of new features, however, characterize this year’s conference.
“Even our meals during this Gathering – dinner, breakfast and lunch – will hold inspiring lessons for those attending the conference,” said Tony Ends, director of Churches’ Center for Land and People. “Sources for these meals will teach us how to get entrepreneurship and stewardship working together for everyone’s benefit.
“They’ll demonstrate how we can help farm families derive increased incomes, keep food dollars circulating in local economies, build urban-rural relationships for increased health and food security – all through people of faith,” Ends said.
GROWN Locally of Postville, Iowa , is just one of the regional farm enterprises whose products and producers will teach this year’s Gathering participants. The cooperatively organized subscription farm will serve up new lessons on building a farm food processing facility and serving institutions like Luther College , as well as other customers.
Dr. Mary K. Hendrickson, Food Circles Networking Project Director and Extension Assistant Professor, University of Missouri , will share her work with numerous agriculture groups who’ve developed marketing strategies and cooperatives, including Ozark Mountain Pork, LLC.
Thirty-four small Missouri pork farmers banded together to form Ozark Mountain cooperative in fall 2001. Within a few months they’d raised almost $800,000 in an equity drive that purchased Mountain View processing plant. The cooperative also received federal and state grants. A year later, the plant had 30 employees processing about 20,000 pounds of meat each week, a third of the plant’s capacity.
The natural pork cooperative is certified under the American Humane Association’s Free Farmed program. Producer members are cooperatively marketing their hormone- and antibiotic-free meat under a Heritage Acres label to customers from St. Louis to New York .
Fr. Maurice Lange, who started La Vista CSA Garden at his seminary near St. Louis , and Dubuque County native Doug O’Brien, of Drake Agricultural Law Center in Des Moines , will also make presentations during the Gathering at Shalom. Churches’ Center for Land and People will show two films it produced in 2005 on winter farmers markets and farm apprentice training and placement through the church.
To obtain a registration form and brochure, contact Churches’ Center for Land and People, c/o St. Benedict Center , 4200 County Hwy M, Middleton , WI 53562 cclp@tds.net 608 831-9319, or go to www.cclpmidwest.org For more details or to obtain photos for this story, call Ends at 608 897-4288.