2007 NYS Farmers' Direct Marketing Conference, January 18-20, 2007 - Owego, NY

The Food Less Traveled: How Good Local Food Contributes to Healthy People and Healthy Communities is the theme for the 2007 NYS Farmers' Direct Marketing Conference to be held January 18-20 at the Owego Treadway Inn in New York's southern tier region. This year's conference planning committee is working on workshops and sessions that will provide knowledge, resources and tools to help farmers to increase their farm's ability to impact their farm's health, consumers' health and their community's health.

Tracks include:

Personal health;

Economic health for farmers and communities;

Environmental health;

Healthy farm families;

Healthy neighbor relations;

Health and hospitality on the farm;

Healthy farm collaboratives;

Healthy children/Healthy communities.

The conference will feature pre-conference workshops, as well. These workshops will spend the day covering a topic of importance to farm direct marketers. These workshops include:

Employee training;

Food service for farm markets;

Start-up bakery;

CSAs

Livestock Marketing.

In addition to the full three days of workshops and sessions, the Farmers' Market Federation of NY will be holding a special market manager training program sponsored by USDA's SARE program. This program is the first year of a three year program dedicated to develop professional standards for managing farmers' markets. Market managers and Cornell Cooperative Extension Educators are encouraged to participate to learn how to work together to increase the capacity of markets to manage themselves more effectively to benefit farmers, consumers and the communities in which they reside.

The NY Small Scale Food Processors will be hosting their annual meeting at the 2007 Conference. The workshops for the NYSSFPA will include:

Healthy practices for healthy foods;

All you need to know to become a 20C licensed kitchen;

Nutrient analysis and why it's important.

New to the conference in 2007 will be the NYSFDMA Display Contest. During the evening meals, teams of marketers will be given identical display materials and product and will race against the clock and each other to create the most attractive, most marketable display possible. The audience will then participate in a group discussion on the merits and failures of each display and judging will be done by applause. The teams that make it through the preliminary round on the first night of conference will move on to compete in the finals on Friday night's annual meeting night. Prizes will be awarded to contestants based on their level of advancement.

The trade show will run January 18 and 19 (Friday and Saturday) and will offer a wide variety of products for the farm direct marketing industry. You're sure to find the packaging you need, the seeds you've been searching for, the perfect gift items for your stand or the special gourmet food item that will make your cashier register ring!

Non-profits and other organizations whose mission and or current work are in alignment with this year's theme (Healthy Food, Healthy People and Healthy Communities) are encouraged to participate in the New York Showcase, an exhibition of the sponsors and leaders in this holistic strategic approach to good health.

The 2007 NYS Farmers' Direct Marketing Conference, The Food Less Traveled: How Local Good Contributes to Healthy People and Healthy Communities, is co-hosted by the NYS Farmers' Direct Marketing Association, the Farmers' Market Federation of NY, Cornell Community, Food and Agriculture Program, NY Farms!, NY Small Scale Food Processors Association, Cornell Cooperative Extension, CADE, and USDA's CNY RC&D.

For more information, contact:

Diane Eggert, NYSFDMA, 315-475-1101 or email diane99@dreamscape.com or

Martha Goodsell, NY Farms! 607-659-3710 or email nyfarms@clarityconnect.com .

VISIT THE COMMUNITY, FOOD, AND AGRICULTURE PROGRAM ON-LINE AT: http://www.cfap.org