Our team is excited to announce that we are planning a Northeast Student Farmer Conference, to be held March 25-26 at Penn State’s University Park campus! For full conference details, visit the conference website at https://sites.psu.edu/northeaststudentfarmerconference/.
Student farmers across programs and universities often face similar experiences as they start and grow their programs, yet there are few spaces for students to gather and collaborate. Our goal is to bring together these active and passionate future agriculture and food systems leaders to present about their own programs and learn about others so we can collectively work towards growing and improving our campus food systems. The conference is also intended to help these young professionals enter the field with a sense of place and community of peers.
As this is a student-centered conference, we would like to invite students to share their experiences by creating presentations about any topic related the student farming, gardening or food systems that they are interested in! Please visit our conference website to view the call for proposals and submit a proposal. The proposal deadline is January 15, 2023.
Topics of interest for presentations include but are not limited to:
- the process of and barriers to establishing student farms
- the importance of campus farms and gardens in addressing food insecurity among college students
- ways to engage our campuses and community in learning about agriculture
- the process of creating social media branding for your program
Faculty and staff are also welcome to propose topics to convene your peers!
Registration for the conference will open in the beginning of the new year, and conference pricing and schedules will soon be available on our website. We are seeking external sponsorships to keep attendance affordable and accessible for students. Please also consider joining our mailing list via our website to receive updates.
We hope that students, staff and faculty involved in your program will be interested in this special opportunity!